Earl's Well That Ends Well (The Way to a Lord's Heart #5) - Jane Ashford Page 0,5

cherish. Her collection of earrings was both an indulgence and a way to easily transport wealth when one might have to pick up and run without warning. Too many times she’d been forced to do that.

Those years showed in her face, Teresa thought. There were faint lines now, hints of deeper wrinkles that would come with time. Her hair was still black as night. Her figure was good. Men had called her beautiful, and that had been as much a curse as a boon. What had this Macklin thought when he looked at her?

She turned away from the mirror, rejecting the question. Whatever he had thought, she didn’t need to consider it. Gracias a Dios once again. An earl and his opinions and whims had no place in the frugal life she’d established for herself. No man did, she repeated to herself. That was over. She was safe. She had enough set aside to live on and could make her own choices. Did she propose to forget that this was far more than she’d hoped for in those dreadful years? Ciertamente no! There were no reasons, no grounds, for self-pity. Only gratitude.

“Eliza,” she called. “I am going to the workshop.” The Drury Lane Theater was preparing for a new play, and they wanted backdrops that showed a vista of mountains. Teresa, who was more than familiar with such scenes, had been engaged to paint them through the good offices of Mrs. Thorpe.

The meeting with that gracious lady had been a true piece of luck. One did not expect to encounter such a presence in this part of London, or find that she was a friend of young Tom.

The maid appeared in the kitchen archway. Teresa had hired a sturdy, taciturn young woman to help her. Eliza offered few words but a solid presence, which came in handy when Teresa went beyond her own neighborhood. She could walk by herself in certain areas. She knew them and didn’t stray into places where she might find trouble. If she had to roam farther, she took Eliza along, as well as a parasol with a stone knob well able to double as a club. Teresa’s demonstration of this function a few months ago had elicited one of the maid’s rare smiles.

“I’ll be back in the afternoon,” Teresa added. Eliza nodded and returned to the kitchen. Teresa put on her bonnet and gloves and set off.

The theater’s busy workshop was nearby. She heard the pounding of hammers before she entered the large open warehouse where carpenters constructed the flats that created the illusion of landscapes on the stage. The smell of paint enveloped her as she went inside. In one corner, artisans produced the smaller objects needed for the drama, such as bottles that broke over heads without injury. Seamstresses worked in a room at the back, though most actors wore their own clothes in the plays.

Workers called out greetings, and Teresa acknowledged them on her way to her area, where a partly painted scene waited. This shop was separate from the hectic world of the stage, and a different kind of camaraderie reigned here, that of craftsmen proud of their skills. There was some rivalry, but not the inflated self-regard and indulgences of temperament Teresa had seen in the casts now and then. Not all actors were as serenely confident as her new acquaintance Mrs. Thorpe.

Tom waved a hammer from the other side of the space. Teresa waved back as she removed her bonnet, gloves, and shawl and set them aside. She tied a long apron over her gown, which had short sleeves so as not to trail in the paint. She went to the table at the side where her brushes had been left clean and ready, opened paint pots, and set to work.

She had loved painting from her earliest years, and her favorite subject was sweeping scenes—mountains, castles, gardens, wide lawns or fertile fields, even opulent rooms. Animals too—herds of sheep or cattle, foxes peeking from the undergrowth, a dog or cat sitting to the side. The vistas sometimes included human figures in the distance as well, which was no problem. But Teresa didn’t do portraits. This was less from a lack of ability than a distaste for the process of reproducing human faces. One had to gaze so deeply into near strangers. And who knew which could be trusted? Or what incorrect message they might read into her gaze? She went back to the crag she’d begun sketching out the

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