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While she worked and talked with them, she was able to escape too. Into a slice oftheirlife.
For all that they sighed about how nice it was to be here by the seaside, what they really wanted to talk more about was where they were from. What they did at home. Whether they worked or were lucky enough to have no profession. What the conditions were with their local canals or the mines or the wool trade, depending on the circumstance of their towns.
She was learning more about England listening to them than she ever had by skimming the papers or discussing the news of the day with the neighbors over dinner.
Arabella hadn’t realized how wonderful it would be to talk to the visitors and learn about them as she created their artwork. It was an exchange she didn’t have when painting seascapes, and she was delighted to discover how much she enjoyed it.
Susan and Betsy flew across the beach as the line dwindled in the late afternoon, at the hour when visitors tended to seek out their lodgings to ready themselves for dinner. Grace and Lady Edith and Maeve had all long gone to other engagements.
“I am ever so sorry we’re late!” Susan cried. She was carrying a basket piled high with tarts, which she lifted above her head as proud as if she had won it in a tourney. “I thought you might need sustenance after all this work.”
Arabella beamed at her. “You’re so thoughtful. I would love something sweet.”
Betsy laughed. “We thought so. There’s a chocolate bun for you, Bell—I remember you’re more partial to them than the raspberry tarts. And there’s a jug of lemonade.”
“You are kind, girls.”
She took a bite of her bun and was too hungry to savor it, happy to stretch out her cramped fingers and to taste sugar on her tongue.
“Are we too late to have our likenesses done?” Susan asked, biting her lip.
“For today, yes. But there will be other days. Today was good.” She grinned at Caroline. “Your sister helped make it a success for me. Without her pushing people toward me, I never would have had such a line of customers.”
Betsy heaved a sigh, then raised a shoulder. “She’s good at fixing things like this,” she said in a rush, as if the words were hard to say. “Was this one of her plans? She always has a plan.Anda list.”
“Yes. But it made everything perfect. I love Caroline’s plans.”
Caroline put her hand on Arabella’s shoulder and gazed into her eyes. “Your success today happened because ofyou, Bell. Not because I had a few ideas to nudge things along. People were drawn to your talent, and your demeanor. You are so good with the visitors.”
“Bell really sees people,” Susan chirped up. “I like the way she paints, like her whole focus is on what is before her.”
Arabella felt absurdly happy. “You are too kind, all of you. Now if you all help me pack up my cart, I have enough coins in my reticule to treat us all to a fine dinner at the eatery near the hotel.”
Caroline frowned. “You should save what you earned today. I can take us all there—”
“No,” she said. “I want to spend the coin that I have earned on a celebration with people I love.”
She was part of more than the scene on the beach, and the group of vendors who sold their wares. She grinned at the Reeves. She was part of these people. And that was all she wanted.
Chapter Two
Arabella polished her spectacles and pulled on her shawl before taking her leave of Matthew and Rachel. She let herself into the Reeves’ house without knocking and called a greeting up the stairs before settling into an armchair in the drawing room.
George ran in. “Bell!”
She took in the muddy knees of his breeches, the dirt beneath his fingernails, and his wild, gleeful grin. “What have you been up to today?”
“Playing sticks in the sea,” he said. “But then Will told me on the way home that he thought he threw his stick the furthest, so I had to wrestle him.”
“George Reeve, come here this instant!” Susan appeared in the doorway with a towel and a cake of soap, a look of menace on her normally sweet-tempered face.
He shrieked and ran off with Susan in pursuit, and Caroline appeared at the top of the stairs. “Let us be off, shall we? Susan and Betsy can manage for the evening.”
Caroline’s dress was plain cambric, unlike the wispy muslins that they both envied on the Londoners who flooded Inverley every summer like the tides. She wore gloves that Arabella knew were shared among the Reeve sisters for occasions like this. There was a patch near the hem of her skirt, but who could notice such a detail when her petticoats fluttered and revealed her ankles as she hurried down the stairs?
Caroline was the most elegant creature that Arabella could imagine. Her chestnut brown hair was glossy and held a curl as easy as anything. Her eyebrows winged away from her eyes in a high arch. Her dark eyes were fringed with long lashes, which Arabella had often cried out that she would kill for when they had been younger. Her high cheekbones and slender nose and firm chin held a classical sort of beauty that Arabella saw on the paintings in the grand houses that ringed round Inverley. They didn’t exist on mere mortals.
Except on Caroline.
