AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With trembling fingers, he reached for the sketchpad and charcoal he’d found in a cupboard in his office and took them over to the window seat in his living room. The window overlooked the garden and the rose bushes Fiona had loved. After the gardener’s butchering, there wasn’t much of them to see, but he hoped that if he sketched the view she’d loved so much, his working again wouldn’t feel too much like betraying her memory.
As soon as he made his first mark on the pristine white paper, something inside of him that had been rubbing wrongly slipped into place. Soon, everything that pressed down on him—the emotions he didn’t know how to cope with, the conflicted feelings he had about letting Fiona go, the world in general—all faded away. There was nothing but the view in front of him and his drawings.
His hand moved faster with each sketch. Flying across the page, capturing ideas and images before he was even consciously aware of what they were. He felt like he was soaring. Free at last. He felt the way he used to feel—invincible. Untouchable in this own private universe, made up of line and tone and colour.
It was only when the light changed enough to affect the shadows in his work that he realised hours had passed. Torn pages from his sketchbook lay scattered on the floor around him, and his hands were black with charcoal dust. For the first time in years, he felt a sense of accomplishment. Which was followed by the peace of knowing a day filled with work.
Stiff from sitting in the same cramped space for so long, he stood and stretched as he scanned the pages at his feet. Hills. Rose bushes. Tree branches. And then, in the later ones, a person appeared. His breath hitched as he bent to retrieve one of the final drawings. Had Fiona crept into his work when he wasn’t looking? She’d often done that. A lone figure in the distance. Someone peeking out of a house. A person walking through the woods. All Fiona. All unintentional additions to work he’d meticulously planned.
But this one didn’t show a figure sneaking into his planned compositions. No, this was something else. This was the painting he’d been dreaming about. The figure was front and centre. And it wasn’t his wife. It was his housekeeper.
“Damn.” Duncan’s head fell forwards as he clutched the page. “Damn it to hell,” he muttered.
He sank to the floor, his back against the wall as he studied his work with a critical eye. It was black and white—emphasising the drama of the lighting as he’d seen it the night Donna had stood in front of the open fridge. In his head, he saw the scene in colour. He saw the brush strokes dancing over the canvas, the rich hues he’d use in the shadows, and the saturated colours he’d dab into the lighter areas. He saw it all as though he’d already painted it.
And he knew then, from a lifetime of experience, that the image would haunt him every minute of the day until it was realised. Until he saw it on a canvas in front of him.
Until he’d painted Donna.
“Damn,” he muttered again. “Damn.”
Chapter 7
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Grace said when Donna staggered in for breakfast a few days later.
All Donna could manage in response was a hysterical laugh. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since she’d started scheming to get Duncan out of the mansion.
“Here, drink this, it looks like you need it.” Grace placed a mug of tea in front of her.
“You are an angel.” Donna sipped the tea while she leaned back into the bench in the breakfast nook.
“Well, maybe you should listen to your guardian angel and give up on your daft plan. Duncan isn’t going to leave the mansion so you can throw a party.”
“I’m not the one throwing the party.”
“Aye, that’s the most important part. Let’s focus on that.” Shaking her head, she returned to the state-of-the-art stove. Fiona might have wanted to restore a lot of the mansion’s Georgian heritage, but she’d drawn the line at wood-burning stoves. Thank goodness.
“Has he taken the bait yet?” Grace said as she cracked eggs into a mixing bowl.
“No.” Donna sipped her tea and resisted the urge to groan.
Duncan was nowhere near accepting the request to lecture at the college. The fake request, she reminded herself. The one she’d been finessing in an ongoing email exchange with the art college dean where she pretended to be Duncan. Right now, the dean was excited
about having Duncan come out of his self-enforced retirement to teach her students. And Donna had no idea how to get him there.
It was a mess. One of her own making. She pressed a hand to her stomach and added ‘buy antacids’ to her to-do list. By the time the ball came around, she was going to have a hole in her stomach the size of her fist.
“I hate to add to your stress,” Grace said, “but the Women’s Institute rang, and they’re coming over today to check out the location and work out the details for their ball.”
“Kill me now.” With a groan she rested her forehead on the table. “I told them to wait until I contacted them.”
“Aye, apparently you don’t have a good track record for following through on those commitments, so they’ve taken matters into their own hands. They want to see the ballroom, to plan decorations and table layout. And they want to discuss catering with me.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Seeing as I’m the catering liaison.”
“I’m...sorry?” Yeah, that didn’t sound remorseful at all. She turned her head, opened her eyes and silently begged the woman to cut her some slack. “I’ll make it up to you, promise.”
Grace snorted. “I won’t hold my breath. You girls have been making trouble your whole lives.” She shook her head sadly. “I wish your mother had half your backbone.”
Donna almost choked on her tea. “My backbone?”
