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“Why would they remember?”
“Maria is right pretty,” said Tom.
“Well, yes, but…”
“And I got Nancy to make a likeness.” Tom unfolded a sheet of paper and showed them a sketch of a dark-haired girl with a haughty expression.
“That’s very well done,” said Señora Alvarez. “I didn’t know Nancy had such talent.”
“She never told you so?” Tom grinned. “She has everybody else.”
“Perhaps she recognizes Señora Alvarez’s superior artistic skills,” said Arthur. The look he received in response made him wish he’d kept quiet. He nearly said he hadn’t meant the comment as empty flattery. But he decided silence was the better part of valor in this case.
Their progress was slowed by their inquiries on the road, none of them successful, and they did not reach Richmond Park until midmorning.
“It is a wilderness,” the señora exclaimed as they approached.
“It’s never been farmed,” said Arthur. “Not since the 1200s at least. King Edward the First established the hunting park then and stocked it with deer.”
“There’s some of them now,” said Tom, who was hanging out the carriage window to get a better view. He pointed to a group of deer leaping away.
“Oh, how beautiful,” cried Señora Alvarez. She was pointing to a glade carpeted with bluebells.
“We should go look,” said Tom. “The señora loves flowers,” he told Arthur.
“By all means, let us walk a bit,” said Arthur.
“We have no time for that,” she objected.
“There is time.” He leaned out and told his coachman to pull up.
Tom jumped down first and turned to hand down the señora. Macklin followed and would have offered his arm, but she was already three steps ahead of him, moving toward the bluebell wood.
It was a lovely spot. The carpet of blue blossoms wound back into the trees like rivulets of color, beckoning one deeper into the shade of branches in new leaf. A stream ran nearby, the gurgle of water blending with birdsong. The blossoms’ sweet scent filled the air.
Señora Alvarez turned in a circle to take it all in. “Maravilloso!” She held out her arms as if to embrace the landscape and laughed.
It was the first time Arthur had seen her really laugh, and he found it glorious—the musical sound, the flash of her dark eyes, the joyous gesture, the curve of her lips. She seemed lit from within, as if a shadow had been whisked away and the brilliance inside revealed. This was how she should always be, he thought, glowing, carefree. To be the thing that made her happy—that would be an achievement!
“I have been meaning to take up some cobbles behind my house and make a place for a garden,” she said. “Why have I put it off? I must do it at once. This is…comida para el alma. Food for the soul.”
Removing a few cobbles sounded meager. Arthur had gardens galore at his estates. He wished he could give her one. But a garden wasn’t like a jewel, to be handed over. Even if she would easily accept gifts, which she would not.
“I think Mr. Dolan would be glad to pull them out,” she went on as if the plan was unfolding in her mind.
“Dolan?”
Señora Alvarez turned as if she’d forgotten he was there. “One of my neighbors is a builder.”
“Ah. Friend of yours?” He was not, of course, jealous. That would be ridiculous.
The query seemed to arrest and then amuse her. “He is, along with others on my street, ever since we rid ourselves of Dilch. Thatcanallabullied Mr. Dolan’s son.”
And she had stopped it. Arthur had never known a woman so self-sufficient. She had a life he knew nothing of, a network of friends. He felt he wasn’t quite one of them, and this galled.
“People talk and do small favors for each other now. It is pleasant.” She walked deeper into the wood, looking right and left as if to drink everything in. She was enraptured, and Arthur found himself envying a swathe of flowers. The idea made him laugh.
Señora Alvarez looked over her shoulder at him. “You find this amusing? That people should be kind?”
