Page 43 of Too Wanton to Wed
Too late, Alistair realized his daughter’s eyes were wild with suppressed fury, not excitement.
Lily clawed the curtains away from her face to better peer about the room. “Why is it here?”
He gentled his voice. “So that you could experience—”
“They’re not real! Take themaway,” Lily commanded, her tone flat.
Miss Smythe paused. Hurt and confusion lined her brow. “Oh, Lily, I had so hoped you would like—”
“Remove them at once! All of them!”
Miss Smythe’s gaze dropped. Her features slipped into blank expressionlessness, as if the true Miss Smythe was hidden behind an emotionless papier-mâché mask. “I meant only to please you.”
“Well, you havenot.” Lily’s voice rose in pitch and volume with each carefully enunciated word. Eyes blazing, she scrambled from her bed to glare about the room. “Why should I pretend to be like you when I can only ever be me? Why should I wish to gaze upon copies of what I will never see? I hate them. They’re awful and they’re fake. I won’t have it.”
“Lily.” Alistair stepped between them, although whether he was sheltering his daughter from Miss Smythe or Miss Smythe from his daughter, he couldn’t say.
“Get rid of them! I hate it all!” Lily darted past her desk and kicked over the painting with the kittens, then the one with blue jays, then the one with hyacinth. “I hate both of you for trying to make me want make-believe instead of a real life!”
Black rain splattered across lily pads, slanting over hummingbirds and snow-white swans, sprinkling across the canvas with the rainbow as well as the one with the storm clouds before Alistair’s addled brain comprehended that the insidious black raindrops were not figments of his imagination but rather the spray of India ink from the full bottle Lily had snatched from atop her desk.
He raced to grab her, to stop her. But even as he lifted his twisting, writhing daughter away from the paintings, she flung the contents of the inkbottle over his shoulders in poisonous arcs, destroying another row of beautiful landscapes in the process. He fumbled behind him to grab the inkwell from Lily’s hands. Blindly, she threw the bottle over his shoulder, narrowly missing the top of Miss Smythe’s head. The inkwell shattered against the brittle boards covering the sanctuary windows, raining ceramic shards and black mist over the last of the paintings.
Miss Smythe remained where she stood. Had been as deathly still as a piece of petrified wood from the moment Lily had erupted from her bed. And now, as he was wrestling Lily onto her chair, Miss Smythe remained as stoic and unmoving as a corpse. As if she, too, was merely brushstrokes upon a canvas, and not a woman whose selfless gift of the heart had just been destroyed.
He pinned his squirming daughter to the chair. He understood her pain, but he would not allow her to wreak any more destruction. Lily had already damaged far more than could be repaired.
“Apologize,” he demanded.
Lily jerked her head away.
“There is no need for apology,” Miss Smythe interrupted. “Lily seeks the real world and all I can provide is an imitation.” Her voice was no longer warm molasses, but thin and brittle as if iron will alone was keeping it from cracking. “I am a poor substitute for what she really wants.”
Alarmed, Lily’s arms went slack beneath his grip. Her head lifted degree by slow degree, as if the realization that she had hurt more than just the paintings was only now dawning. At last, her gaze sought out her governess.
Making neither comment nor eye contact, Miss Smythe picked up ruined canvas after ruined canvas. The one with the kittens smudged to nothingness as it banged quietly against her hip, leaving bits of ink and specks of color along the creases of her skirt.
Alistair’s heart clenched. A still-wet canvas could only mean Miss Smythe had been up through the night, carefully painting each stroke of the kittens’ fur for his daughter. And now their paws and playful faces were little more than muddy splotches. Miss Smythe stared at the oily mess without blinking, as if she and the ruined canvas were alone in the room.
Lily’s shoulders trembled beneath Alistair’s fingers. He glanced down at her lest she be poised to strike again, but this time, Lily’s dark eyes were full of shock at her own handiwork.
“M-Miss Smythe... ”
“Lessons are canceled for today, Lily.” Miss Smythe’s voice was as devoid of life as the systematic way her tireless arms piled the carefully planned canvases atop one another. “It seems we could both use a holiday.”
Wispy strands of black hair stuck to Lily’s wet cheeks as she desperately shook her head.
But Miss Smythe was not watching for a reaction. Her empty eyes remained unfocused on the paintings before her, as if she were hoping to rid the room of evidence before the moment engraved itself upon her memory forever. Methodically, she staked one atop the other. Each step, each faint clatter of painting upon painting seemed to echo in the cavernous chamber until at last, the stack reached her shoulders. She gathered up as many canvases as would fit in her arms and, without taking her leave, removed both them and herself from the room. The mechanical lock clicked home behind her.
“I didn’t mean it,” Lily shouted at the closed door. “I don’t hate you!”
A long moment passed. The door remained closed. Miss Smythe did not return.
Lily twisted to pin her anguished gaze up at him.
“I don’t hate her.” Silent tears slid down her pale cheeks. “I didn’t mean it. Iswear.”
Alistair knelt before his daughter and looked her in the eyes. “She just wanted to do something nice.”
