If there were such a thing as a muse, she had taken over the house with a fury. Thad leaned against the trunk of the tree and watched the same basic activity he had been viewing for the past five days. Father dashing in and out on the quest for a new variation of a pigment he had concocted in his laboratory. Mother reading aloud to keep their guest soothed. Rosie emerging every hour to refresh drinks and all but force-feed the artist. Henry raising makeshift canopies to soften the glaring light.
And Gwyneth. Thad could scarcely take his eyes off her and counted it a blessing she was too absorbed to notice.
“She is a pretty thing, isn’t she?” Arnaud leaned into the bark beside him, his eyes on her too. “Jacques cannot cease talking about how she let him use some of her paints.”
Pretty? Nay. Pretty was too tame a word for the way she looked as she stood before the easel Thad had made her, eyes focused on the canvas with unwavering intensity. They fairly glowed with concentration, like the water of the Caribbean when the sun shot through it. Her hair, gold spun with fire, had tumbled down again and, again, been tied into a knot and secured with a brush. Which he now knew would last until she needed said brush, at which point she would pull it out and send the curls down her back again, until one had the audacity to fall into her face. Then out would come another brush to play the part of a pin.
Thad drew in a breath, watching as she made a broad, sweeping stroke in saffron. Then his friend’s words fully penetrated and he frowned. “You like her.”
Arnaud’s lips twitched. “Certainly. Who would not? She is sweet and kind, and lovely besides.”
Sweet, kind, and lovely? Those were the best words Arnaud could come up with to describe her? Thad shook his head and let his gaze drift her way again. She was more than those, so much more. She was heady honeysuckle, a wide open azure sky, pure sunshine gleaming through snow-white clouds. She was tossing waves and frothing whitecaps, churning tempests and searing lightning.
And if Arnaud was smitten…the thought pierced. But if his interest was kindled by this nymph before them, then Thad would have to put aside his own intrigue.
He had no choice. Not with all he owed him. With all the pain he had already caused. “Will you…come to call on her?”
The twitch gave way to a grin. “Do I look daft? Non, admiration here is stayed by practicality. Something our charming Miss Fairchild is sorely lacking.”
Thad’s straight spine stiffened. “She is not impractical.”
Arnaud snorted a laugh. “You said yourself you keep coming home to find her near collapse, with that blasted brush still in her hands. That thrice this week you have had to carry her up to her room when she fell asleep on her feet. She hasn’t so much as a dash of temperance. Which is fine and well in a friend but not at all what one needs in a wife. The house would go to ruins in a week.”
Thad’s house seemed to be ticking along just fine, but he saw no reason to talk his friend into paying her court if he weren’t so inclined.
Arnaud’s snort turned to a full-bred chuckle. “She baffles you, n’est-ce pas? Unlike with every other man, woman, and child in these United States, you cannot look at her and divine exactly what she needs because she is far too scattered.”
Yes, that was it. That was why he had found so many occasions this week to simply stand here and watch her. He was trying to determine what she needed and not just memorize the way her eyes narrowed or her teeth caught her lower lip, that curve of her shoulder when she made the smallest of motions with brush on canvas. “I will figure it out eventually.”
“Hmm. Well, mon ami, you keep up the study. I need to get home. Find me when you return from Washington City tomorrow.” Arnaud clapped a hand to his shoulder and disappeared.
Father emerged from the house yet again, stirring a pot of something or another. “Try this one, Gwyneth. Ground cochineal as one would expect, but I tried a different method of heating it with the linseed oil.”
Gwyneth took a step back from her canvas and smiled as she lifted the stick from the pot and saw the crimson within. “It looks perfect, Mr. Lane, thank you. Let us hope it dries correctly.”
“If not, let me know and I shall try a different ratio.” Father gave her a warm smile, full of contentment at getting to put his love for chemistry to use, and motioned to Mother. “Are you ready, my love? We don’t want to be late to Mr. Matthews’s.”
Mother put a slip of paper in her volume of Shakespeare. “Of course. Gwyneth, do you need anything before we go?”
A moment later, after the shake of Gwyneth’s head, his parents took their leave and silence descended upon the garden. Thad let it settle and wrap its arms around them. Let the birdsong filter into his consciousness. Breathed in the scent of the herbs Rosie had planted. Felt the bite of bark against his back. And watched her.
Watched as she turned fully back to the painting. Watched as she dipped that brush into blood-red paint.
Watched as tears welled in her eyes and her face pulled into a mask of taut agony.
He pushed off from the tree. For the last five days, he had looked only at her. Her as she wielded paint and brush, not the canvas onto which she put it. But something whispered that it was time. Time to see the painting.
Finally, after an eternity of working and mixing and glazing and drying, the world on the canvas began to pulse. Only then did she know a piece was nearing completion. When she felt the thud of blood through veins and timed each stroke accordingly. When light and shadow joined together and danced. When the elusive vision she had been chasing stayed, solidified, and became.
When the critical shade waited, trial after trial of this hue and that finally giving way to the right color. The right preparation. The right use of sublimers and levigating mills and mullars, the right consistency of oil and pigment and turpentine.
All for red. Crimson red, pure and bright, tending neither toward orange nor purple. No vermilion, no cinnabar. No rose nor carmine. Red. Red that gleamed like a ruby. Red that bespoke England and the army. Red that meant life and its loss.
Her vision blurred, forcing her hand to pause. No. No, not now. She could not let the world double and waver. This moment, of all the moments of the past months, she needed clarity.
Swallowing, blinking, and sucking in a long draft of air, she waited. There. No more haze. Just the canvas, every inch covered with paint. The garden outside Papa’s window, misty with greens and yellow. Verdigris, sap green, and the terra verte Mr. Lane had helped her perfect. King’s yellow, oker, and sienna unburnt.
The desk, the shelves, Papa’s hair in shades of brown. Extract of liquorice, asphaltum, and umber.
The play of light with white lead and crushed pearl. The score of shadow in lampblack and Indian ink.
Scalloped edges and intricate curves. A window to a world forever lost.
And now red. Brighter than the jacket that painted-Papa wore, underscoring, overcoming. There, here, dripping, staying. Hidden, always hidden.
Always there. Taunting. Haunting.
Shaking.
She jerked her arm away before she could ruin it all, and the brush fell from her fingers and rolled down her dress. White turned crimson, with slashes and gashes on the swath moments ago still pure. Just like that, ruination and destruction.
“Gwyneth.”
Thad. When had he moved? Gwyneth lifted her head to find him beside her and realized his hand rested on her back. But he didn’t look at her. His gaze remained latched on the canvas, moving over it as if following a path. Reading a line. Darting and jumping, tracing the exact journey her brush had taken, the trail of colors in the order she had applied them.
His face went tight. The hand on her back slid down to her waist and anchored there. When finally he looked to her, his eyes burned like a candle’s flame. “What happened to him?”
Trembling, quaking that she couldn’t still. She looked to the painting. How did he see? There was no blade, no pool of blood. Just Papa, standing as he had been before the shelves she had practiced with pencil, behind the desk with its familiar scratches and dings. Papa, tall and strong.
Papa, pierced through. But Thad wasn’t to see that. He wasn’t to see the slight variation in shade between jacket and blood, so easily attributed to light and shadow. He wasn’t to realize the look upon his face was that one moment between fear and pain.
“Gwyneth.” He tightened his grip on her, demanding that her gaze return to his, making the tremors quicken. He searched her eyes until she felt sure he saw every thought, every fear, every monster hiding within. And he looked as though it rent him to pieces as it had done her. “He is dead?”
The word bit like a sword, made her knees buckle and her stomach heave. Like Papa, she crumpled. Like Papa, she fell. But rather than a hard floor catching her, strong arms held tight, and her fingers found Thad’s lapels. A keening welled up, but her throat closed off to trap it.
“Tell me.” Too quiet to be called speech, naught but a murmur in her ear. A bid more than a command, a begging. “You need to tell me.”
“I…can’t.” Even those two words made her tongue twist. Made the black monster gnash its teeth. “He will hear me.”
“He will not. Gwyn, look at me.” He pulled her head back and tilted her chin up. Gently but insistently, until those yellow-topaz eyes burned her anew. “You are safe. You can tell me. Tell me what you saw.”
“Nothing.” She loosed his coat, but only with one hand. Only so she could grip his wrist and hold on. Hold it there, where it cradled and steadied. “I saw nothing. I can’t have. If he thinks I did, he will kill me next.”
“He will not.” His words burned like his eyes.
“He is coming, I know he is. He mustn’t hear me. He mustn’t know I know, or he will…he will…”
“I’ll not let him. I swear to you.” His thumb swept over her jaw and lit a new quake that shivered through her. “Tell me, sweet. Tell me who killed your father.”
The cry ripped out, savage and fierce. So long held at bay, but rising now like a tidal wave, pounding at the walls of her being until it forced her to the ground.
Thad went down with her, never letting go. Tell me.
Did he speak it again or just think it so loudly it echoed along with the sobs in her mind? She tried to shake it away, close it back up, and knit it tight, but tears rushed down her cheeks and surged through her throat. Through the hole they made came the gasp. “Un–un–cle.”
“Oh, Gwyn.” He must have pulled her closer, for she felt his chin rest on the top of her head, his fingers tangle in her hair. Arms tight around her, keeping the demons away. “One of his brothers?”
“M–mama’s. G–g—”
“Gates.” Certain dread made the word fall like lead. “Do you know why?”
The river of tears hit a bank of rocks within her, making rapids. Gasps. She could only shake her head and bury her face in his chest, letting the floodwaters empty her. Letting them spill out until there was nothing left within. Not a torrent, not a trickle, not a tear. No horror, no hope. Nothing.
Nothing but the soothing brush of fingertips through her hair and the drifting scent of sandalwood. “You are safe now, sweet. I’ll not let him harm you, so help me God. You can start anew here.”
But there was nothing new to start.
The tan of his frock coat faded to the black of her eyelids, and she held tight to whatever fabric was under her fingers now. “Don’t let go.”
“I won’t. Not ever.”
Not ever. Never. The only hope she had left…and it was a promise for nothing.