was fifty-seven years old. Once, he had been a successful portrait artist, but when arthritis began to attack his hands, he was no longer capable of the precise detail the work required. Isobel had first met him in a London gallery three years ago. Loxley had died and she’d found herself homeless, with nothing to her name but a besmirched reputation.
At that gallery Joseph Molina had noticed her admiring one of his watercolour sketches of Gloucestershire and came over to her. ‘I know this place,’ Isobel had said, pointing to the picture. ‘I grew up in the house that looks out over this valley.’
He’d told her he was thinking of moving there, permanently. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ he said, ‘and besides, there are practical reasons. I can’t afford the rent on my London studio any more. My sister, Agnes, will be coming with me. Why don’t you come, too?’
He was so kind to Isobel that day, at a time when she’d felt surrounded by enemies. She’d been moved almost to tears, but forced a smile, as she always did. ‘I cannot expect your charity.’
‘No charity,’ he’d answered. ‘I will find you work, believe me!’
So she’d moved back to Gloucestershire with him and Agnes. She’d learned how to grind pigments and mix them with linseed oil and how to care for his canvases and brushes. She knew, of course, what people whispered about her. She expected to make no new friends in Gloucestershire, but then, she’d only ever had one true friend here.
Connor. Connor. The way he’d looked at her today. He’d heard everything. Believed everything. And it hurt, more than she’d believed possible.
‘Look,’ she was saying now to Joseph. ‘Look what I found for you.’ And soon she was proudly showing him the sticks of charcoal and hog’s-hair brushes she’d bought for him from a pedlar at the fair. ‘I enjoyed the fair immensely,’ she went on, forcing a merry smile, ‘but you should have been there, too, Joseph. It wasn’t the same without you.’
‘Did you find anything of interest?’
‘Yes, indeed.’ She laid out the new brushes with care. ‘For instance, I found an adorable stray puppy—together with some stray children. Oh, and I met a little girl. A rich and rather sad little girl.’
‘Perhaps she reminded you of yourself, Isobel? When you were young?’
She lost her smile. ‘Perhaps, yes. But the girl, Joseph! She was very sweet. I gave her the puppy and that made her happy.’
It had made her happy, too, Isobel realised—at least for a little while. Until she’d seen Connor Hamilton’s face and the way he’d looked at her. Something had wrenched the breath from her lungs at that look of his and she still felt bruised—agonised—from it.
Forcing the memory down, she went to examine the painting on Molina’s easel.
‘This is beautiful!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s the sunset over the woods on Calverley Hill, isn’t it?’
‘It’s showing promise,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘But the greens I’ve used aren’t quite right. Will you help me to mix the colours, Isobel? I need aquamarine, I think, and yellow ochre. Also a touch of cadmium, though I don’t know where the cadmium has got to...’
How quickly she settled into her usual routine. Within minutes, she’d found his precious phials of pigment amidst the clutter, as she always did, and the time flew by, until a middle-aged lady in a grey dress and pinafore—his sister, Agnes—came bustling in and scolded mildly, ‘Now, Joseph, it’s time for you to be putting away those brushes of yours and getting yourself ready for your tea.’
‘Agnes is quite right,’ Isobel told him, ‘so off you go and I’ll put these things away for you.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, my dear.’
‘Nor I you,’ Isobel replied. She smiled again, though the minute he’d gone she felt despair washing through her.
She’d been stupidly rash to visit the fair today. To pretend she didn’t care about the whispers she heard everywhere.
‘That’s Sir George Blake’s daughter there. Remember her? Just to think, she was once an heiress! But her father died a bankrupt and she went to live with a London rake when she was eighteen—yes, only eighteen! Then, when he died, she took up with this artist fellow—yes, they live just up the valley...’
Whenever she heard the talk, Isobel reminded herself she was content with her new life. The Molinas couldn’t have been kinder; she had this home in the countryside she’d always loved and indeed she could almost call herself happy—until something happened, like at the fair today, when Connor Hamilton appeared.
* * *
She told the Molinas all about the fair while they ate their supper, describing the livestock tents and the entertainers, and the crowds who enjoyed it all so thoroughly. She told them just a little about the Plass Valley children, at which Agnes broke in, ‘Do you mean the children of those travellers, who arrive every summer to gather in the hay?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Isobel answered. ‘And they’re lovely, but a little high-spirited.’
She went on to explain to Agnes about the runaway puppy—they both loved the story of the lively creature shaking mud all over the Reverend Malpass. At around nine she washed up the dishes and tidied everything away, then she took a candle to her upstairs room under the thatched eaves. She closed her door and leaned against it.
Then, and only then, did she allow the smile she’d put on for her kind friends to fade away.
She closed the curtains on the fast-gathering darkness outside, then by the light of the candle she gazed at herself in the mirror hung on a nail in the wall. Her dress was made of cheap cotton, the kind any country girl might wear, but she realised now that it was too tight around the bodice. Although her figure was slim, her breasts were full and the way the often-washed fabric of the gown clung to them made her look cheap. And that wasn’t all.
Her skin was tinted unfashionably gold from the sun, in a way no lady would permit, and her long, obstinately curling fair hair had tumbled as usual from its pins. Try as she might, her efforts to tidy it never lasted long. All in all, she looked like a girl out for fun—a certain kind of fun. Once she’d been the heiress to Calverley Hall—but now her position in society was lowly indeed. Here she was, twenty-three years old and completely without prospects, yet she’d always told herself she was content. But today, at the fair, her safe little world had been rocked to its foundations.
Over the last few years she’d heard all the gossip about Connor Hamilton. In fact, she often suspected the locals took great delight in repeating it in her hearing, loudly, in the town or the market place. She’d heard what must be every single detail of how Connor had risen in the world—the news had filtered back, month after month, year after year.
‘He’s living in London—yes, the big city. He’s proving himself mighty skilled. He’s become partner in a major iron manufactory and he’s making himself extremely rich into the bargain...’
When someone told her—with more than a little satisfaction—that Connor was buying Calverley Hall, she started hearing fresh flurries of speculation. ‘He’s weary of London,’
