Page 80 of Counting on Love

Georgiana knew that many gentlemen’s country homes had been built in stages, with each new owner adding a little something of his own. As styles changed, there could be incongruities. But this home had no such excuse. It had been conceived as a whole. To look like this.

Olivia laughed. “I’ll tell you a story. A few years ago, my father hired a young painter to be my tutor. I had no particular talent in that direction, but I liked painting and Mama was eager to encourage anything that got me off of a horse. The man was engaged for six months.”

“Can you imagine the boon?” Reginald put in. “He was required to spend only a couple hours a day with Olivia, yet was paid a salary, provided with all the paint and canvas he required, and given a room and board. Jasper said the man put on at least a stone.”

“You didn’t like him?” Georgiana asked.

“I never met him. I was away at school. Jasper did not like him.”

“What was wrong with him?” Alice asked.

“He was very superior,” Olivia said. “Of course, I thought that meant he was a very good painter. All artists, I thought, were superior.”

“And he was young and handsome,” Reginald said.

“He was not. He had frog eyes.”

It was wonderful to see the two of them teasing one another. Georgiana realized it was not only the boys who rallied one another.

Olivia said, “He was not handsome, but he was young. And there was my dangerous impressionability to fear.” She made a face. “We were only to meet in the small parlor, door open, and every ten minutes someone would pass by. It was very distracting, but I persevered. We tried portraits first, but I soon showed myself a miserable portraitist. I had no desire to paint fruit in bowls. So we moved onto landscapes.”

Olivia looked at Reginald, as though daring him to say something, but he kept his lips clamped.

“We were permitted to take the easels out onto the lawn or the terraces, and I did paint some decent views, but there simply was not that much to inspire me. So we went back to the small parlor, and I made some sketches of better views from memory. I sketched this.” She swept out her hand.

Reginald laughed, knowing where she was headed, but did not interrupt.

“Well, the dim man made me sketch it again and again and kept pointing out what was wrong. It infuriated me. Finally, I said I was going to do the painting. And I did. It was a very good painting, if I do say so, but he mocked it.”

“And Olivia started to cry.” Apparently, Reginald’s silence had limits.

“I was angry. It must have been Jasper’s turn to lurk nearby because he stormed into the parlor looking ready to strangle poor Master John. I showed no signs of having been—I don’t know what, accosted, I suppose—so Jasper merely demanded to know what was wrong. I sobbed ‘He hates my painting!’ or something to the effect. Jasper looked at it and said, ‘What’s wrong with it?’ And in his oh-so-superior way, Master John scolded Jasper and said, ‘She will never improve if you patronize her.’”

They all laughed. Olivia could mimic a supercilious painting master to a T. But she was not finished with her story.

“Now Jasper was infuriated. He put Master John on a horse, which pleased neither John nor the horse, and hauled him here. The view offended all his artistic sensibilities. He said he couldn’t be expected to anticipate Chaumbers’ architect had been an imbecile. To which Jasper replied, ‘You are referring to the previous Earl of Iversley.’”

“And,” Reginald interjected, “no painting master can out-superior Jasper. John saw his salary and meals evaporating before his eyes.”

“It was awful!” Olivia exclaimed. “Poor Master John spent the next two weeks abasing himself. If I dropped a splatter of paint on the floor it was a masterpiece. I finally told Father to send him away.” She pouted. “My painting career was over.”

They laughed with her. She obviously had no regrets.

“Ah, but if only you had painted the folly instead of the house. Shall we?” Reginald indicated the way forward. The ground now slanted down. In the distance, Georgiana could make out an irregular outline of stacked brick and stones.

Olivia linked her arm through Alice’s and led. Reginald and Georgiana followed, though he did not offer his arm to her. That seemed an admission of the discomfort they both felt. She could hear Olivia continuing to chatter.

“Crispin used to bring us out here to get us out from underfoot. Me and Reginald. We would hide and he would look for us. I used to think we were so clever and that there were thousands of places in the ruins where he would never find us. But of course, there are only four or five rather obvious spots, and we hid there over and over. You wouldn’t think Crispin would be so patient, would you? But he was.”

Oh! This family! They broke Georgiana’s heart. They were so close. All of them. That was such a rarity. She couldn’t say anything, do anything, that might disrupt this. Especially not now when they needed each other so much.

Georgiana didn’t hear Alice’s response and couldn’t make out what Olivia said next. She and Reginald were walking quite slowly. They had fallen behind. He touched her arm.

“Georgiana, we should talk.”