And to Daniel’s infinite relief, he slipped the miniature back into his pocket.
“How long will you remain in town?” Daniel asked, as much to change the subject as to know the answer.
Lofthouse shared another glance with Butcher. “Mr Butcher’s ventures may detain us for some time.”
Nothing in Butcher’s aspect gave any hint as to what those ventures might be, and the man himself said not a syllable.
“Perhaps,” Lofthouse continued, “long enough me to perform some small service in honour of your nuptials.”
Daniel’s eyebrows took flight.
“A wedding portrait,” Lofthouse hastily added. “Or a pair of portraits, if you prefer, to hang side-by-side.”
This cleared up a great deal of the mystery but still left Daniel in the dark on a few points. “You are acquainted with an artist?”
Lofthouse blinked. “No, I—well,” he blurted with yet another glance at Butcher. Then he dipped a hand into his jacket. “Here—perhaps I had better show you.”
And so saying, he withdrew a palm-sized book in a leather shroud from his inner jacket pocket, opened it, and held it up for Daniel’s inspection.
A remarkable pen-and-ink sketch of sloe blossoms met Daniel’s gaze. Before he could take the book from Lofthouse’s hands, however, the page turned, this time to a drawing of goats leaping across a stream. More glimpses into the natural world followed—songbirds, squirrels, flowers, rabbits—along with a few architectural sketches of tumbled-down castles and sundry other ruins.
“You’ve done these yourself?” Daniel asked.
“Yes,” Lofthouse admitted, turning another page.
Daniel was on the verge of pointing out how, while this was all admittedly impressive work for one he’d known only as a solicitor’s clerk, a wedding portrait required one to draw human figures rather than plants, animals, or architecture. But the pages Lofthouse turned to now showed human figures—lounging beneath berry-bushes, dancing through meadows, crouching in tree-forks, or simply leaning against a convenient pile of stones to stare back into the viewer’s eyes.
Or rather, not-quite-human figures. For as Daniel peered closer he saw Lofthouse had replaced some figures’ feet with hooves, added horns or antlers to particular brows, affixed damselfly or moth’s-wings to certain shoulders, and subtly (or not-so-subtly) pointed the ears of every single character depicted. They were rendered in a startlingly realistic style considering they must have come whole cloth from Lofthouse’s imagination.
Only one sketch appeared altogether normal. A particular portrait of a man with a long twice-broken beak of a nose and hawkish brows above his dark eyes, with rivers of ink-black hair shot through with streaks of silver. A drawing of Butcher, and a particularly flattering one at that, which cast his severe features into something more tender than otherwise.
Daniel had but a glimpse of this before Lofthouse snapped the book shut and tucked it away into his jacket again. A glance at his face showed a faint rosy hue beneath his copious freckles. Butcher, meanwhile, still looked as stoic as stone.
Lofthouse cleared his throat. “While it might not have been my profession these past few years, I’ve put in some practise at it. And,” he added, “if you would consent, I would like to put what little talent I possess into your service.”
Daniel hadn’t considered the prospect of a wedding portrait. Indeed, some days he could hardly believe he was lucky enoughto be married at all, much less living openly as himself with the most wonderful woman in all the world. He glanced to Sukie to see what she thought of it. She appeared more intrigued than otherwise. He returned to Lofthouse.
“I think,” Lofthouse ventured, “you deserve a better likeness than what others have previously painted.”
A bark of laughter escaped Daniel. He recovered himself enough to reply that he quite agreed.
A short conversation sufficed to arrange the particulars. Lofthouse would return with his art kit on Saturday, after Daniel arrived home from his half-day at the office, and come back again on Sunday afternoon, and so on for as many weeks as it took to complete the portrait. Lofthouse seemed confident it wouldn’t take terribly long. Butcher seemed not to mind that this adventure would deprive him of his clerk’s services for hours on end. Daniel shook hands on the bargain with both of them and they took their leave, with Sukie bidding them come for dinner again when their calendars permitted.
“I think,” she said when the door had shut upon their guests and both Lofthouse and Butcher had vanished down the lane into the evening, “that went off rather well, don’t you?”
Daniel agreed and told her so with a kiss.
~
The nightly conversations betwixt Sukie and Daniel in the attic of Mrs Bailiwick’s Academy continued for some weeks.
And throughout those weeks, Daniel agonised over when, if ever, he ought to kiss her.
Touch had come easily. Far easier than he’d expected. It began on a night like any other since their evening visits first ensued, when, in the midst of one of the yawns that signalled an end to their conversation for the day and thus gave Daniel an otherwise unaccountable pang, Sukie had reached up not just topluck her black-and-white cap from her head but also to unpin her hair. The severe bun tumbled down over her shoulders in carefree waves. The sight made Daniel’s heart skip a beat.
“Oh!” said Sukie when she recovered from her yawn and caught his wide-eyed stare. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean… that is, I didn’t think…”
Daniel felt she had nothing to apologise for in letting her hair down. But rather than say so, or anything else sensible for that matter, he instead kept up a reverent silence as his hand reached out of its own accord to take a particular curling lock between his fingertips.
