“You will, sir?” David leaned across the bed, all eager excitement. “Tomorrow? We will get out all my new things and I will paint?”
“Tomorrow morning after breakfast.” Sydnam smiled at him and got to his feet. “Lie down and go to sleep now or we will both incur the wrath of your mother.”
David plopped himself back on the pillow, both his cheeks suddenly flushed.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “is going to be the best day. I can hardly wait!”
Sydnam slipped out of the room ahead of Anne.
Kit had already disappeared.
It would not hurt him to give his stepson some pointers. This aversion he felt to painting-even to other people painting-was something he just had to get over. It was amounting to something like a sickness. He had felt actual nausea when he had smelled Morgan’s paints back at Glandwr-and when he had been buying David’s in Bath.
Anyway, he had committed himself now. He was going to do something with his stepson-because his marriage and his commitment to the boy were more important than his own particular sickness.
But for a moment he had to pause on the stairs. He felt dizzy.
Anne was sitting on a low chair in a large, light-filled, almost completely unfurnished room on the nursery floor that she guessed was the schoolroom whenever there were children in the house old enough to need one.
In the middle of the room David’s very new easel was set up. A small canvas rested on it, and David stood before it, his new palette in his left hand, a new brush in his right. On a table beside him was propped an oil painting of the sea, which Sydnam was using for instruction-he was standing behind David’s right shoulder.
The air was heavy with the strong smell of the oils.
Anne watched Sydnam more than she did David or his painting. He was abnormally pale. Last night he had been uncommunicative. He had not touched her after they went to bed, but had turned onto his side away from her and pretended to fall asleep fast. But he had not slept for a long time, just as she had not, though she had pretended just as diligently as he.
Did he believe what she had told him the night before-though he had not asked for and she had not offered details? Or did he still think himself ugly and untouchable?
She guessed that he had felt a failure during the afternoon because it was Kit who had given David his first riding lesson. And she knew that he had agreed to the painting lesson in order to redeem himself and be the father he was determined to be. She knew too that painting was something he did not even like to think about, let alone involve himself in.
But this was a challenge he had chosen to face-for the sake of her son. She fell a little deeper in love with him as she watched. How many men, even if they had married her, would have been prepared to do more than tolerate her illegitimate son?
“No, no,” she heard him say now. “You are still gliding the brush as if you were using watercolors. Try using your wrist more to produce the texture of those waves. Flick the brush.”
“I just cannot do it,” David said in exasperation after trying again. “Show me.”
Something happened then-or did not happen-that made Anne turn cold. How she knew she never afterward understood-but she did know that Sydnam had lifted his right hand to take the brush, only to discover that it was no longer there.
She covered her face with her hands and drew a few slow, silent breaths before looking again.
Sydnam had the brush in his left hand and was bending closer to the canvas. But the hand shook, and it was obvious that he could not perform the demonstration he had intended. He made a low, inarticulate sound of distress and then bent forward to take the end of the brush in his mouth while adjusting his hold on the brush so that he held it grasped in his fist. He made a few bold brushstrokes on the canvas and drew back.
“Ah!” David cried. “Now I understand. Now I can see. Those are waves and they are not flat. Let me try.”
He took the brush from Sydnam’s hand and made his own strokes on the canvas before looking up with triumph into Sydnam’s face.
“Yes,” Sydnam said, laying his hand on his shoulder. “Yes, David. Now you have it. Just look at the difference.”
“But it is all one color,” David said after returning his attention to the canvas. “Water is not all one color.”
“Exactly,” Sydnam said. “And you can do much more mixing and blending of colors and shades with oils than with watercolors, as you will soon discover. Let me show you.”
Anne watched them, her two men, their heads bent together, utterly absorbed in what they did, quite oblivious to her presence.
Was there to be some healing after all?
Was healing possible when grave damage had been done?
Was wholeness possible when one had been horribly maimed?
She spread a hand over her abdomen, where she sheltered the unborn member of their family.
The food on Sydnam’s plate tasted like straw.
He could not get the smell of the oils out of his nose or out of his head.
“Are Kit and Lauren going to accompany you and Anne to Lindsey Hall this afternoon, Sydnam?” his mother asked.
They ought to have called there yesterday. He had written to Bewcastle, of course, to inform him that he was taking a short leave of absence-to which the terms of his employment entitled him. But he had not explained the reason. Common good manners dictated that he call at Lindsey Hall with his new bride before Bewcastle heard from someone else that he was at Alvesley. They certainly ought to go today.
“Perhaps you would like to take my place in the carriage, Mama,” he said. “I feel a little indisposed. I will stay here.”
Anne looked at him sharply across the table.
“So will I,” she said. “We can go to Lindsey Hall some other time.”
It was impossible to argue with her when they were not alone together. But all he wanted was to be left literally alone.
“We will take the children riding, then, Lauren, will we?” Kit suggested. “I daresay David will come too, with your permission, Anne.”
“Oh, certainly,” she said. “He is looking forward to it.”
Not long afterward Sydnam and Anne were upstairs in their rooms together.
“I need some air,” he said, “and some solitude. I am going outside to walk. Will you stay here or do something with my mother?”
“I want to come with you,” she said.
“I will not be good company,” he told her. “I feel indisposed.”
“I know,” she said.
And the trouble was that he thought she probably did.
It struck him suddenly that loneliness was not perhaps the least desirable state in the world. Was marriage going to feel too crowded? It was an alarming and unwelcome thought. He had always longed for a wife, for a life’s companion. But foolishly he had thought of marriage as a happily-ever-after, as a destination rather than a new fork in the path through life.
“Don’t shut me out of your life, Sydnam,” she said as if she knew very well what he was thinking. “We must try to make our marriage work if we possibly can. We were friends in Wales, were we not? Let’s continue to be friends now. I want to come with you.”