Charity Begins at Home (29 page)

As if nothing had happened, he went back to his painting. When she only stood there, her anguish knotted in her throat, he glanced over at her as if nothing had happened. "Charity, we've six days till Midsummer Eve. And I'm sure you have many other tasks to finish before then. The play, for example." And then, as she slowly began to paint again, he went on, "Jeremy has learned the whole thing, you know, not just his own bellows. He recited all three acts for his mother and me yesterday, with Lawrence supplying the whale noises. I think it is much better than anything written by that—
oca pocco cotto
."

It sounded like an insult, and Miss Falesham had taught her none of those in Italian class. Charity found herself smiling. "What does that mean?"

"Undercooked goose. You see how much Italians love food. Insults and compliments both take the form of food."

By the time she had filled in the background behind the whale, he had taught her how to call someone a stupid beef, a sweet biscuit, a nagging tripe, and a limp fish, along with the associated hand gestures. By the time Tristan pronounced her accent perfect and her gesticulation worthy of a Neapolitan longshoreman, she had nearly forgot the ugly incident that preceded his lesson.

As the afternoon went on, they fell silent and applied themselves to their work. Painting was a lulling activity, drawing Charity into a world of color and light and almost no sound. Once Tristan spoke absently to her in Italian, and she smiled and decided not to embarrass him by asking for a translation. It must be the Italian part of him that paints, she thought, for he had never before confused his languages. She stepped back, looking critically at her daubings next to the precise lines and curves of his work. Perhaps when she knew more Italian herself, she would make a better show as a painter—and understand Tristan better.

Chapter Eighteen

Tristan was doing his best to persuade Charity that she had a future in painting theatrical backdrops when they were interrupted. He wasn't ungrateful to see his nephew shuffle in, dragging a picnic basket behind him. It meant he would have another hour in Charity's company, even if he must needs share her with Lawrence, too.

The boy planted himself before the stage, arms crossed over his chest. "Cammie made me bring you tea."

Charity looked startled, as if she had never meant to be occupied in the church hall through teatime. "Well, that was kind of her! And of you, too, Lawrence."

But Lawrence wasn't to be cozened out of his sullens. His benevolence, it turned out, was really a punishment for having refused to do his lessons that morning. "Jeremy got to go rock-hunting with Charlie, and I had to bring you tea! It's not fair!"

He howled that eternal lament once more for good measure. Tristan groaned while Charity wrinkled her nose and resorted to bribery. She sat down on the edge of the stage and began unloading the basket. "Come it beside me and have a crumpet. See, I'll spread some apricot preserves on it."

Even the famous apricot preserves didn't divert Lawrence from his grievance. Through a mouthful of crumpet, he reiterated, "It's not fair. He always gets his way because he's younger and everyone likes him best."

"Everyone likes him better," Charity corrected, exactly as Mrs. Cameron would. "With only the two of you, there can be no best."

It was a measure of her distraction, Tristan thought, that she did not anticipate how Lawrence might misinterpret her grammar lesson. "So you like him best, too, don't you?"

"Be quiet, Lawrence," his uncle said unsympathetically. "And close your mouth when you chew."

Lawrence subsided into mutterings, slumping down next to Charity on the stage. The adults resumed their conversation, Charity noting a paint spot on Tristan's hand that didn't match any part of their project. "What are you painting now? I mean, of your own work."

With curious Charity, secrecy was the best policy, if fascination was the aim. "Oh, it's a study of brown."

"Of brown? Brown what?"

"The color brown. Or rather the colors. Fascinating, the brown spectrum is. I'm starting around gold and ending at sable."

Her confusion was pretty enough to sketch—wrinkled forehead, chewed lip. "But what are you painting? What is the subject?"

He shrugged and quoted yet another master, this one a radical who contended the human face was merely an arrangement of circles and half-circles. "Oh, subject doesn't matter. Only composition and chromatics count."

Bored with this artistic discussion, Lawrence begged another crumpet. As Charity leaned over to get it, something gold slipped from the demure neckline of her blue cambric gown. "What's that?" Lawrence demanded, half-rising from his perch. "Around your neck. The necklace."

Charity's cheeks pinkened as she replaced the gold circle under her bodice. "Just my locket. Now shall I spread preserves or—"

Secrecy was a lure to little boys, also, and little earls especially hated being kept in the dark. "Let me see it!"

Tristan sensed one of Lawrence's patented temper fits coming on and rose, speaking sharply to head it off. "No. Now sit down, boy, and behave yourself."

The tone that always subdued Jeremy only fired his elder brother. He lowered his brow and snaked out his hand and grabbed at the gold chain, his fingers leaving smudges on Charity's pale gold skin. Instinctively she pulled back from the attack, and Lawrence, triumphant, ashamed, jumped off the stage and dashed away, holding up the broken chain.

"Where's the locket?" Charity whispered, pressing a hand searchingly against her heart. But the locket had not fallen safely into her gown.

"Get back here, Lawrence." Roughly Tristan grabbed his nephew's arm and took possession of the chain. Then he forced Lawrence to his knees on the floor under a half-built booth. "Find it. It must have dropped here somewhere."

Charity was pale and trembling as she started to join the boy's search. But Tristan took her arm and eased her back into her seat. "It just fell under that booth. He'll find it—" he raised his voice— "if he knows what's good for him."

He had seen the intrepid Charity shaken already once today, but he had learned how to comfort her—quietly, unobtrusively, without drawing attention to her vulnerability. He sat beside her and held her hand as she watched Lawrence's search.

When Lawrence emerged from under the booth, her shoulders drooped in a release of tension. Head bowed, the boy trudged back to them. "Here it is. I'm sorry, Charity. I didn't mean to break it."

She took the little gold locket from him and held it clasped in her fist for a moment. Then, slowly, she opened her hand. "It's just the miniatures of my brothers." She took her other hand back from Tristan and faltered with the latch. "Come here, Lawrence."

The boy sidled close to her arm. "See? That's Ned. He was my twin. And there's Joey. He was our youngest. That's all, Lawrence. Nothing exciting after all."

Lawrence stood gazing at the little pictures, two boys, both dark like Charity, one very young and one nearly a man. "Do you mean they're dead? But that boy—he's my age!"

"Yes, but he wasn't sturdy like you, and the influenza took him. He died late one night.It was a long time ago." She closed the locket with a decisive snap. "Why don't you run and tell Cammie you accomplished your mission? Perhaps she will let you chase after Charlie after all."

As Lawrence made his escape, Tristan rose and began to clear away his supplies. He couldn't stay next to her without wanting to hold her and let her cry on his shoulder. But he knew better than to let his tenderness overwhelm them both. She needed understanding as much as sympathy, someone to listen to her for a change.

The locket rested in her lap as she fussed with the broken link, taking it off the chain then slipping it back in and trying to squeeze it shut. When she finally spoke, her voice came muffled as she bent over the necklace. "Poor Lawrence. He doesn't mean to be so difficult. He just hates to be denied. Neddy was just the same. He could never abide the word no. I learned that soon enough—whatever he was told not to do, he had to do."

She dropped the chain next to the locket and raised her hands to her hair, pulling it back and plaiting it with quick jerky motions. She still didn't look at Tristan, only gazing at the stack of booths near the window. "It's just that word no. You should use some roundaboutation instead. I could always work Ned around without saying it if I had time. Papa never liked to tell him no either. But when he wanted to leave school and join the Navy, Papa kept saying no. The war was over, but he just couldn't let him go. He loved him best, you see, and we'd just lost Joey. I think I might have talked Papa round. What else would Ned have done with his life, if not joined the military?"

She picked up the chain again, threaded it through the locket, and held the broken ends together in her fist. Finally she stuffed it in her pocket. "But Ned couldn't wait. He ran off and volunteered on the first ship he saw in Portsmouth Harbor, an old ugly corvette bound for Riga. It just blew up one night—old gunpowder, they said. He hadn't told me what he was planning. It was the only secret he ever kept from me. If only I'd known, I would have stopped him." She finally looked at him then, not in accusation, but he could see the anguish in her eyes. "I never let myself imagine what it must have been like for him that night. But your painting—it was like that, wasn't it? Terrifying, with no escape. Burning or drowning."

There was no use apologizing, but he knew nothing else to say. "I'm sorry you saw it."

"No, no. It's not your fault. It must be a great painting if it felt so true. But that's the danger, isn't it?" She felt in her pocket for the little gold circle, opened it up, and studied her brothers' faces. "I keep trying to forget that. If it's true, if it's real, it will hurt sometime, no matter how much I try to make it right."

Knowing it was inadequate, he offered the obvious. "But if you can't make it right, it doesn't mean you've failed. You don't have to take all the world's burdens on your shoulders."

"Oh, I know." She glanced at him now, her smile a little crooked. "I know that the world would go on turning without my help. I'm not essential at all—oh, don't pay me any mind. I'm just a bit blue-deviled because I saw the date today and realized that Ned's birthday is Saturday. He'd be coming of age."

Tristan envisioned the date carved on the headstone in the churchyard: June 19—Saturday. "But you are twins. It's your birthday, too."

She looked startled as if this had never occurred to her. "Well, yes, I suppose so. But we don't celebrate it anymore. I visit the graves, but that is all."

He found it so intensely sad he could hardly keep from gathering her close and vowing to banish all sorrow from her life. But of course, she would recognize the emptiness of that. Sorrow was inevitable in life. She just hoped for a little happiness, too, and that she wouldn't have to make it all herself.

So he only jumped off the stage and held out his hand to help her down. "Now that the hand of God is done, I feel inspired to another divine work. I think I will try to use the last bit of sun on that brown study of mine."

She gave him a sidelong glance as they left the church hall. "You work too much, you know."

"Finally! Finally I understand what is meant by that old English aphorism, the pot calling the kettle black."

This made her laugh, and he felt cheered. Perhaps he made her happy after all. At least he could divert her on those few occasions when she let herself feel sad.

She didn't let go of his hand as she usually did, as she was supposed to do, but held it shyly until they entered the public road. "Tristan, will you do me a favor?"

"Anything," he swore. "Within reasonable limits, that is."

The ironical glint was back in her dark eyes. "This is reasonable, I think. Would you teach me a bit of Italian? I mean, more than just insults."

This he hadn't expected. "I suppose I could. I don't usually speak it in England."

"Not even with Anna?"

"No. I doubt she's fluent any longer. But I imagine I could. Why?"

She took a deep breath as if ready to confess to a crime. "I learned it at school but haven't had much call to keep up with it. Oh, I've read
Dante's Inferno
, but I don't imagine Italian is still spoken that way."

"I don't imagine it ever was, even in Dante's time." Just before they reached the gates of Calder Grange, he said, "I should have known you would ask me that."

That annoyed her as he figured it would. She regarded him through her dark lashes, suspicion all over her face. "I am glad you find me so predictable."

"Oh, predictable you are not. Once I might have called you inconsistent—in fact, I think I did."

She didn't look away, but color crept up her cheeks at this reference to the unmaking of their betrothal.

"But now I see that you are consistent. Not, oh, symmetrical, mind you." He held the gate open for her, musing, "Only, well, designed with a logic I haven't come across before but is nonetheless logical. I cannot predict a thing about you, but when some facet of you is revealed I think, yes, that makes some unlikely sort of sense. Some harmony that echoes the harmony of the universe."

She liked that better as he hoped she would. She would not give over to flattery. She used that so much herself she could sense Spanish coin from far away. But objective appraisal—she liked that. She wasn't used to having anyone study her so closely or analyze her so well. But then she hadn't known an artist before. Lucky for him, observation was his stock-in-trade.