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He squinted at the landscape and found no inspiration there. Then he began to doodle in one corner, the image taking shape with speed under his hand. After a few minutes he moved to another part of the sheet and began another sketch, then another, aware that his spirits were lightening, too focused to see any danger in what he was doing.
Soon the pages were filling with a procession of travelling carriages of all shapes and sizes, luggage piled on top and falling off behind and from each window a child was hanging, dropping toys, waving, fighting with a sibling. The top of two adult heads were vaguely discernible in the chaos and a pack of dogs ran behind, barking madly. In the middle was his self-portrait looking desperate, his arms full of precariously piled precious objects while infants rampaged around his feet.
‘Show me what you have done.’ It was Nell, somewhat tousled from having slid down the rock.
‘No.’ He flipped his book shut, realising he must have filled five or six pages with his fanciful sketches.
‘But I want to see.’ She tried to tug it out of his hands, but he held firm, pulled it free and sat on it.
‘No,’ he said, reaching to pick up her sketch book.
She too had been caught up in the foolish fantasy. There, on the first page, was Elinor’s impression of his travelling family, a circle of carriages drawn up like a gypsy encampment. Children of all ages had been sketched in, noses in books, playing with kittens, chasing each other in a wild game of tag over and under a collection of scantly draped classical statues, the subjects of which looked on in frozen marble hauteur. In the middle, in front of a camp fire with a kettle suspended over it, was a woman drawn from the back, her sun bonnet tipped back, her feet on a box, a fan in her hand. A wickedly accurate sketch of himself showed him sitting in one of the carri
ages, head in hands.
He flipped the page and found the children sitting in a circle, solemnly listening to Elinor herself, perched on a box while she read to them from a book. Her hair was dishevelled, she was wearing the divided skirt and she had dotted in a fine array of freckles across her own nose.
‘Give me that back!’ She made a grab for her sketchbook and missed as he held it over his head. ‘I thought perhaps you would employ me as a governess,’ she explained.
‘They seem to be paying you a great deal of attention,’ he said, finding his voice was, inexplicably, not quite steady. ‘Elinor.’
‘Yes?’ She was a little pale, but that was probably explained by the time of the month. He shouldn’t have let her come on this strenuous walk, he wanted to wrap her up and cosset her. Even as he thought it, he realised that she would hate it, that what she wanted was freedom, the freedom he had. The freedom he could give her. Hell, he would risk it.
‘Elinor, why don’t we get married. Really get married?’ He dropped the sketchbook and pulled her to him. ‘There is no one else for us. We are friends. We have this.’ She was so still in his arms that she seemed frozen.
Her mouth under his was warm, tremulous. He coaxed with his tongue, slid his lips across hers, trying to show her how he felt without saying the words that would place such an emotional burden on her.
For a moment she melted, swaying into his body, her lips parting to let him in and he was dizzy with triumph, then she pulled back so she was straining against his grip. ‘No, Theo. No. I do not want to marry you. I told you, I meant it.’ He let go and she took three steps away from him, her back turned. ‘There has to be love, Theo,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I am a fool to be such a romantic when I thought myself rational, but there you are.’
All the laughter had gone from her, all the trust, replaced by regret and wariness. He should have listened to his head, not to his heart. Listened and settled for what he had, not what he hoped for. She could give him friendship and laughter and her courage. But not her love.
And now she was miserable and he was lonely again. So lonely. He had not realised how wide and deep that hole had been until she had come into his life and filled it. Now it gaped blackly under his feet.
‘I’m sorry, Nell.’ She did not move. ‘Compromise is not right for us.’ A nod. ‘I just thought it would be companionable, you and I together. Can we be friends again? Have I ruined things?’
‘No. No, of course not.’ She turned and walked back to him, put her arms around as much of him as she could manage and hugged hard, then stepped back and smiled. Well, that settles it. Hugged like a brother. The smile was a little wary, but it was genuine, he saw it in her eyes.
‘What have you got to eat in that bottomless satchel of yours?’ she asked. ‘Or do we have to snare a rabbit if we aren’t to go hungry?’
‘I went and charmed some food out of the cook. That was why I was late,’ Theo confessed.
‘Good.’ She nodded towards a dense thicket. ‘I’ll just go and, um…’
Theo knelt down and began to unpack the food. Nell’s sketchbook lay open where it had been dropped. He reached across and tore the sketches clean out, looked at them for a long moment, almost hearing the ghost of the children’s laughter, then slipped them inside his own book, tying the strings into a knot it would be impossible to open without a knife. All the portraits of their children who would never be.
Elinor reached the shelter of the bushes before her legs gave way and she sank down on the turf. To have a good weep was tempting, but pointless. She would have to emerge, nose red, eyes bleary—and what could she say? I love you, of course I’ll marry you, even if you love someone else? I’ll marry you because you want a companion and feel sorry for me so I’ll do? She prided herself on common sense and stoicism; now was the time to exercise those qualities.
After all, she was no worse off than she was a few weeks ago, she told herself, selecting a nice dense bush and checking for thistles, adders and stinging nettles.
Adjusting her clothing again, she decided that actually she was worse off. Much worse. If you had never eaten strawberries, you had no idea what you were missing. But once you had, you never forgot the taste and always yearned for them. Theo was strawberries and cream and every sensual pleasure she had ever experienced and he was here, now. Not safely out of the way, but a constant reminder, a constant temptation.
There was only one way to get through this and that was to stiffen her backbone and just endure until they parted company. ‘Well,’ she said brightly as she emerged from the thicket, chin up, shoulders back, ‘I hope you did well with the cook, because I am starving.’
They ate chicken legs and crusty rolls, cheese and apples, all washed down with cider. ‘I’m sleepy,’ Elinor confessed.
‘Sleep, then.’ Theo took off his coat, rolled it up and set it down as a pillow. ‘Go on.’
‘You, too.’ Elinor stretched out on the short grass in the shade of the big tree where Theo had laid out the food. ‘We both need our sleep if we are to search that chamber in the cellars tonight.’
