Page 23 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

Chapter 8

A true artist, Constantia had long believed, distinguished herself by the skill with which she manipulated perspective. One must be able to find the angle, the shadow, the unique focal point that transformed the ordinary into art.

For instance, she knew at first sight that to transform the little stone church into anything more than merely picturesque, it would be necessary to impose some distance between it and the viewer.

Ideally, several miles.

At that distance memory, or imagination, could render anything it liked from smooth, gray regularity: a rough and interesting ruin, perhaps. Or an edifice charged with gothic grandeur.

Distance, of either the physical or temporal sort, was not within her means, however, and she did not fancy standing longer in the drizzling rain. So when Lord Ryland opened the nail-studded oak door and ushered her into the rear of the nave, she began immediately to consider where she might best position herself to make a passably interesting sketch of the interior.

Why this drawing mattered to her, when the earl was likely the only person who would ever see it, she could not entirely say. Perhaps it was simply a matter of stubborn artistic pride. She didn’t like to waste her time on bad drawing.

Perhaps she did not wish to seem ungrateful. He had given her a present, after all, and paid for it out of his own limited funds—which she knew because, after he’d gone out that morning, she had tried to busy herself with straightening their things and his little leather purse full of her money had fallen onto the floor.

A peace offering, he had called the gift. An apology of sorts? For touching her?

Ironic, then, that she had found the gesture itself touching.

At least, until he had mentioned his belief that the act of drawing might restore her memory and, by implication, free him of his responsibility to her.

With a twitch of her shoulders, she shook away the last vestiges of anything that resembled sentiment. He might choose to describe paper and crayons as an impractical gift, an extravagance, but she was—or at least had been, until recently—a working artist. Why should she view the items he’d chosen as anything but practical? They were tools, such as any tradesman might require for a job.

Their footsteps echoed in the empty church, though it was not large. She could not recall the last time she had been inside a church; closed-door gatherings of strangers made her nervous. Lord Ryland, however, moved as if he were right at home in this quiet, holy place, and not at all as if he had reason to fear the strike of a lightning bolt.

After a moment, she heard the scrape of a door across stone as someone entered from the far end. A grizzled older man in rough clothes approached and swept off his shapeless hat in deference.

“Mornin’, sir. Ma’am. Tolliver, sir. Sexton.” He bowed his introduction. “Be there aught I can do for ’e?”

“I hope we’re not intruding?” Ryland approached the sexton. “We were charmed by your little church, and my, er, my wife wished to take a sketch or two.” He gestured with the art supplies before handing them off to her.

“Oh, aye.” The sexton favored her with a smile. “Newlyweds?”

It was, she assumed, Ryland’s hesitation that had prompted the question. She parted her lips to form some reply, but the earl interrupted with a stilted nod and a noncommittal “Hmm” that the other man seemed to regard as sufficient confirmation.

“I’ll jus’ leave ’e be, then, shall I?”

It was Constantia’s turn to nod, more eagerly this time, and Lord Ryland’s to speak. “I, er, I wondered if you wouldn’t show me around a bit while she works. You strike me as the sort of fellow who must know all the interesting history of the place.”

“Oh, aye,” Mr. Tolliver readily agreed, and with a wave of his arm he ushered Ryland deeper into the little church and began to explain the miraculous provenance of some scrap of tapestry that hung on one side of the chancel.

While the sexton held forth in respectful tones, Constantia took several slow steps down the aisle, evaluating the architecture, the quality of light and shadow it produced. After weighing her options, she eventually settled on a pew on the left-hand side, four rows from the back, and slid almost to the middle, where a pillar obscured most of the view of the pulpit but also forced an unexpected angle on the altar. Then she slid open the small wooden box and traced a fingertip over its contents.

Charcoals. She hadn’t used them in ages. Her own art teacher—or the closest she’d ever come to having one, in that wretched girls’ school where she’d been more scullery maid than student—had dismissively told his pupils that charcoal left behind dirty hands, making it unsuitable for ladies’ use. That, of course, had only made Constantia more determined to master the medium.

But the teacher had kept his supplies under lock and key. And sometime before she had managed to pick that lock, well before she had had to leave the school under cover of darkness, she had learned how to wield a brush instead.

Nothing had been the same since.

After so long, she was eager to try again. But she didn’t immediately select one of the thin black sticks. As always, she swept her empty fingertips over the paper in a pantomime of sketching, calculating without conscious thought the necessary mathematics—division, geometry—and rehearsing the gestures by which the little church’s interior would take shape beneath her hand. Though the page remained pristine, she could see the outline, knew where the first stroke must be laid, before she ever picked up an implement.

A movement in the corner of her eye pulled her gaze away from the altar. To her left was a row of three windows, each made up of nine rectangular panes of wavy glass. Through the middle one, she watched as the sexton and Lord Ryland picked their way through the churchyard, stopping now and again to study a moss-encrusted grave marker. Behind them, the dark sky threatened rain.

It looked a rather unpleasant history lesson, to her way of thinking.

She turned back to the scene she was meant to be drawing and selected one of the pieces of charcoal, carefully prying it up from the box with her fingernail. How fortunate that the fall hadn’t injured the hand she drew with. Tilting her head ever so slightly to one side, she touched the charcoal to the paper and laid down one sweeping line of black, so stark against the creamy white that she gave an involuntary gasp.

The thrill of creation would never cease to amaze her.