Page 26 of The Truth About Dukes
“Do you mean that?”
“Perhaps not an apprentice, but anybody half skilled. You’ll probably let him talk you into painting you wearing coronation robes, the usual castles and churning seas in the background. He’ll try to suggest you have blue eyes instead of green, but you must stand firm. Eye color is not a detail and your eyes arelovely.”
They had reached the orchard gate, which her ladyship yanked open and charged through.
Robert stood for a moment outside the walls.
“Well?” Constance said, holding the gate open. Her question, a single syllable, demanded something—an explanation or justification of some sort, for the human condition, for the evils of the day, for the imponderable mysteries of life itself.
Robert knew he ought to dash through the gate, slam it closed behind him, and refuse to budge until the comfort of darkness descended. Instead he marveled at the view of the Hall amid the fields below. The dread and resentment and whatnot were still lurking in his mind, but they slept like winded hounds, and let him look on his home—hishome—from a distance for the first time since he’d been sent away.
“Rothhaven is not so dreadful when seen from this perspective.” The Hall looked peaceful, in fact, mellow old stone settled on a quilt of green. “Not so bleak.”
Constance re-joined him just outside the gate. “It’s a fine old place. Perhaps whoever does your portrait would be willing to paint a few landscapes. The portraitists are a snobby lot, generally, but we all pass through a landscape phase, once we leave the still lifes behind.”
He took her hand this time, a very bold overture on his part.Shewas not terrified of the out-of-doors, after all.
Though at the moment, neither was he. Uneasy, a bit anxious, possibly even agitated, but not terrified.
“I would like to leave my still-life phase behind,” he said. “What could I offer you that would induce you to paint my portrait?”
Constance studied him in that serious way of hers. “Do you mean that? You wantmeto paint your portrait?”
“I’m told as subjects go, I’m not hideous. I want no strangers under my roof strutting about and acting artistic. You are beyond half skilled, and I know you won’t turn my nose purple. I am offering you a commission to paint the portrait of the present Duke of Rothhaven.”
In Robert’s mind, until that moment, the Duke of Rothhaven had been his father, or a role inhabited by Nathaniel. He, himself, had been Robbie, or to old familiars, Master Robbie. Soames had called him Robert, for last names were discouraged at such an establishment.
Watching Constance inventory his features, her gaze roaming from his brow to his nose, to his mouth, to his hair, he felt himself becoming the Duke of Rothhaven. Standing a little taller, adopting a slight air of hauteur the better to withstand her perusal.
“Sitting for a portrait is boring,” she said, brushing his hair back from his temple. “You will grow testy.” She eased a finger under his cravat and ran it around his neck. “I will grow testy.” She gently steered his chin a half inch to the left, then a half inch to the right. “We will disagree.”
“I trust your judgment.” He would somehow trust himself to withstand her touch too.
She smoothed his lapels, fluffed his cravat, and made another adjustment to his hair. Her smile said she knew his compliment extended beyond her ability with paints and brushes.
“Let’s have a look at the trees,” she said, leading him through the gate. “I adore the scent of plum blossoms.”
She prattled on, about light and seasons, how many different types of green could shine forth from a single tree branch, and why coronation robes were too trite to be endured. Then she shook a branch and showered herself with petals, and Robert knew himself for a doomed duke.
She adored the scent of plum blossoms, and he adored her. He simply, completely adored her.
“I am making a fool of myself,” Constance said, as the last of the petals drifted down from the branch above her. “Acting like a child.”
His Grace stood just inside the orchard walls, the gate open beside him. Constance knew she ought to be saying something more,making conversation, but she’d never seen quite that expression on a man’s face before.
Rapt, sweet—there was a word for this sort of regard, just as there was a color for every object to be rendered on canvas. Rothhaven’s gaze was respectful, also intimate. His eyes conveyed…She searched her mind for the term that applied, a sort of rosy, soft, deep word. A special word not often used out loud.
“So what if you are acting like a child?” he said. “You were never allowed tobea child, or not allowed to be enough of a child. I at least had ten years of genuine childhood, and they stood me in very good stead.”
Constance brushed plum blossoms from her sleeves. “Childishness stood you in good stead? Inthatplace?”
He approached, a man who always moved quietly, who even thought quietly. How on earth should she paint him?
“Not childishness, though I indulged in much of that, particularly at first. Childlike-ness, perhaps. My saving grace became my mind, which is ironic when an illness of the mind landed me there in the first place.”
“Explain yourself.” The green of his eyes alone would take much consideration, much experimentation, though mixing pigments was not an enjoyable aspect of Constance’s art. Some of the colors were toxic, others volatile, and yet, from those dangerous concoctions could come great beauty.
“A child is curious,” Rothhaven replied, “to the point of folly sometimes. Because I was curious about Pierre’s accent, I learned French, albeit from a footman. I did not understand that it was a farmer’s version of the language, but I can read the proper kind now because I was curious then. I was curious about the stars—they were visible to me even in a walled garden, even through a locked window. I thus learned astronomy and how to navigate by the heavens. If and when I escaped that place, I would need that skill.”
