And then everything had changed.
* * *
The next morning, Ren glared at the neat columns of figures written on the ledger in front of him. The estate was in excellent shape. The tenants seemed content and the crops prosperous. Sad to give it to a man such as the Duke.
He shifted back in his seat, glancing at the paintings on the study wall left over from his grandfather’s time: a hunting scene and a poorly executed depiction of a black stallion in profile.
He felt more an imposter here than anywhere else on the sprawling estate. In fact, he had been in the study only twice since the return of the cheap portrait painter—the before and after of his life. He’d been summoned that day. Lord Graham had been sitting behind his desk, his face set in harsh lines and his skin so grey it was as though he had aged a lifetime within twenty-four hours. He’d stood immediately upon Ren’s entry, picking up the birch switch.
And then his usually kindly father had whipped him. And he hadn’t even known why.
He had been summoned one other time, after completing school. There had been no violence. Instead, Lord Graham had sat behind this desk, his eyes shuttered and without emotion. He’d spoken in measured tones, stating only that an allowance would be paid, provided Ren stayed away from Graham Hill and kept his silence. Ren had taken the stipend for three months before profitable investments had allowed him to return it and refuse any further payment.
Now, in an ironic twist of fate, Graham Hill could be his. Ren looked instinctively to the window and the park outside. The branches were still largely bare, but touched with miniscule green leaves, unfurling in the pale sunshine. Patches of moss dotted the lawn, bright and verdant beside grass still yellowed from winter.
It hurt to give it up, just as it had hurt to leave it.
A movement caught his attention and he saw a female figure approach. She held a cane in one hand and a basket in the other. His wife. She was counting her steps. He could see it in the tap and swing of her cane and the slight movement of her lips. She moved with care, but also with that ease which he had so often admired. Good Lord, if he were deprived of sight he would be paralysed, unable to move for fear of falling into an abyss.
He watched as she progressed briskly, disappearing about the side of the house. He supposed she had returned to berate him. Or else she wanted to again demand an annulment.
Anger tightened his gut. He’d kept his word. She’d had freedom, autonomy and yet she’d thrown it back at him—
‘My lord, Miss...um, your...her ladyship is in the parlour,’ Dobson announced.
He stood at the study door, his elderly face solemn and lugubrious.
Poor Dobson—he’d found the marriage difficult enough. Not that Dobson disliked Beth, he simply disliked the unconventional.
Beth entered immediately. Naturally, she had not remained in the parlour, as instructed. She never had been good with directions. He watched her approach and knew both a confused desire as well as a reluctance to see her. Even after years spent amidst London’s most glamorous women, he found her beauty arresting. She was not stunning, exactly. Her clothes were elegant, but in no way ostentatious or even fashionable. Yet there was something about her—she had a delicacy of feature, a luminosity which made her oddly not of this world, as though she were a fairy creature from a magic realm—
‘Ren!’ Beth interrupted his thoughts in that blunt way of hers. She approached, counting her steps to his desk, and now stood before him. With a thud, she put down the large wicker basket. ‘You must see these!’
He dismissed Dobson and watched as Beth opened the carrier.
Then his breath caught. A stabbing pain shot just below his ribcage. His hands tightened into balled fists as she pulled out the rolled canvasses, laying them flat on the mahogany desktop.
‘Where did you find those?’ He forcibly pushed out the words, his throat so tight he feared he’d choke.
He stared at the images: the barn, its grey planks splitting with age, his old horse, the mosaic of autumnal colours, orange leaves and grass yellowed into straw from summer heat.
They were childishly executed, but with such care...such love.
For a moment, he felt that eager enthusiasm to paint. It was a tingling within his fingers, a salivation, a need, an all-consuming drive to create and capture beauty, if only for a moment.
‘Why did you bring these here?’ he asked in a staccato rhythm.
He felt his face twist into bitter lines—not that Beth could see them. It should have made him feel less vulnerable, that she could not discern his expression, but oddly it did not. He’d always felt as though Beth saw more, as though she was better able to discern human frailty, despite her lack of sight.
‘To remind you.’
‘I do not need reminding.’
He ran his fingers across the dry dustiness of the paint. It had been late August. The weather had been hot, a perfect weekend of cloudless skies and air still redolent with summer scent as though fate had conspired to give him that one, final, beautiful weekend.
‘I wanted you to remember how you felt,’ Beth said.
Of course he remembered! How could he forget? He’d felt as though, within a single instant, everything he had known, everything he had loved, everything he had believed had been erased, disappearing within a yawning hole, a cess pit.
The pain, the darkness—worse—the hopelessness had grown, twisting through him, debilitating even now. He closed his eyes, squeezing them tight as a child might to block out nightmares. He pushed the canvasses away. They fell to the floor, taking with them the brass paperweight and a candle stick, the crash huge.
‘Ren?’
‘Take them!’
‘But why? You loved to paint. You loved this land.’
‘You need to go.’ He forced himself to keep his voice low and his hands tight to his sides because he wanted to punch the wall and hurl objects against windows in a mad chaos of destruction.
‘Nonsense! I’m not going anywhere until I understand the reason behind your decision. There is a reason. Jamie said so.’
‘Jamie? Jamie?’ Did even Jamie know his secret—a man who seldom spoke except about seedlings? ‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing. He went silent. But I need to know, to understand. I thought these would remind you. I thought you might enjoy them.’
‘You were wrong.’
‘Why?’
‘I—’ Words usually came so glibly, fluidly. Now they stuck in his throat. ‘You need to go,’ he repeated.
‘Why?’
‘Because I am angry and I do not want to frighten you.’
The woman laughed—not harsh laughter, but gentle. ‘Ren, you could never frighten
