“I don’t. I have. I don’t think about…him. Ever. It was years ago, after all. And my own decision.”
Sephi slanted her head to the canvas of the army captain standing majestic and motionless while battle raged around him. “You still paint him.”
Verity swallowed. “He’s a fine subject. Nothing more. Just one month of summer, that’s all it was. We were so young.”
Oft it felt as though that single month had happened to someone else, a girl of seventeen that no longer existed, a secret love that had been purely the imaginings of a fevered dream.
“Hmm.” Sephi inspected the painting. “He might see these one day, you know. Now he’s an earl, he’ll be socialising within theTonand would recognise himself.”
Verity shook her head. “I’ve not seen him for an age so my interpretation of how he’d look is bound to be wrong. And even if he did, surely it matters not? He would never connect suchworks with some capricious fizgig who broke his heart all those years ago, especially a female one with no concept of war.” She smiled brightly. “Besides which, theTonknow me to paint solely cats.”
“Hmm,” Sephi replied once more. “Where is he now?”
“I read…somewhere or other, at his newly inherited estate in Derbyshire. Even after all this time, I can still hear him describing how idyllic September was there. The most perfect season of the year. The calmness of it. The tranquillity, the closure of nature. He used to read to me from the list of late season flowering plants from the 1677 edition ofFlorae Altdorffinae Deliciae Hortenses sive Catalogus Plantarum Horti Medici.”
“Eh?”
“A plant catalogue.”
“Gosh,” murmured Sephi, “the thrill must have been too much to bear.”
Verity elbow-nudged her teasing cousin but…
When young, she’d thought herself and Miles would travel the world together. He would collect plants and she would draw them. They’d publish books and…
She twisted and closed her eyes, then opened them to the canvas of war and her world of mud and grey.
How life could turn on a sixpence.
Or one fateful night.
Sephi waved the retrieved newspaper beneath her nose. “Well, I propose we should all wear scarlet for our next promenade and truly scandalise London.”
And Verity grinned. For without such a turn on a sixpence, she would not have been able to help Sephi or Aunt, nor have the patronage of a powerful duke for her battlescapes or the London matrons commission tabby cat portraits.
“And I also propose,” Sephi continued, “that we take the phaeton and promenade in Kensington Gardens instead of St James’s Park the day after tomorrow, it being Sunday.”
“Yes. So we could. I shall wear that new walking dress you designed for me.”
“And I shall wear my red pelisse.”
They clasped hands and struck a pose.
“The Scandalous Scarlet Spinsters!” Verity smiled. “So beware Gentlemen of a Delicate Disposition! Heed me Daughters of Innocent Mien! For we in scarlet remain unbowed.”
4
“IT IS NECESSARY TO APPRISE STRANGERS, THAT IT IS NOT ALWAYS SAFE TO BE IN HYDE PARK, OR KENSINGTON GARDENS…”
(THE PICTURE OF LONDON. 1810)
With senses alert, a pistol in one pocket and a knife in the other, Miles rode his steadfast and valorous battle-steed Lupin along the gentrified and innocuous thoroughfare of Uxbridge Road.
The central regiment offices of the 13thLight Dragoons were normally attended by the clerk Mr Gallagher but an ale-house fracas with a Mr Albarn – clerk from the 12thLight Dragoons – had resulted in a broken fibula. Since Gallagher lived only a short distance outside of Town, in Wesborn Green village, and Miles had fancied a gallop, he’d sent a message asking if he might pay a call to his home instead. See if he knew anything of the two men on his list of…well, two.
All was quiet this early Sunday morn as the Uxbridge Road now passed Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, whichdoubtless would later fill with the hordes of London who relished swanning about in their finery.
As agricultural fields became more prevalent, the air became sweet and he allowed Lupin, a fellow veteran of both Waterloo and Toulouse, to gallop, while he pondered on who might wish him ill. Which at least gave an old soldier something to think about rather than financial ledgers and investment portfolios, both of which his father and brother had excelled at.
