with Vera and Catherine in the family parlor.
Catherine sat at the pianoforte and did justice to a Haydn sonata. Vera occupied a wing chair and worked at some piece of embroidery. No fire burned in the hearth owing to the mildness of the evening, and thus the room was illuminated only by candles.
Oak had taken the end of the sofa, where he sketched—what else was he to do in such a pleasantly domestic situation?—and wondered if Miss Diggory and Jeremy were canoodling in their stolen hour. That Oak’s imagination had been pulled in canoodling directions all day left him annoyed and mentally weary.
“A bit slower on the adagio,” Vera murmured. “Take your time with it, Catherine.”
Catherine reduced the tempo of her playing, and the music was better for it.
“How did your social call go?” Oak asked, for want of anything else to say.
“Quite well,” Vera replied. “Mrs. Treeble’s nephew, a little fellow by the name of Samuel, has come to live with her. He and Alexander got on splendidly. Catherine and Tom Treeble graciously agreed to mind the younger boys in the garden, so Mrs. Treeble, Miss Diggory, and I could enjoy a quiet conversation.”
“She’s your nearest neighbor?”
Catherine brought her slow movement to a conclusion, though she had played only as far as the exposition of the first theme.
“That’s as far as I know well enough to attempt in front of other people,” she said, leaving the piano bench. “I very much enjoyed paying a call with you, Step-mama. Perhaps we can do more socializing before the summer’s over.” She snitched a piece of shortbread from the tea tray. “Mr. Dorning, good night. I will dream of skies full of rainbow clouds.”
She curtseyed and left Oak alone with Vera.
“Rainbow clouds?” Vera asked.
“The undersides of clouds are particularly interesting from an artistic point of view. Catherine and I were fortunate enough to observe a parhelion, which prompted a discussion of the challenges of capturing natural light on canvas.”
Oak’s pencil paused above the page. The undersides of a woman’s bare breasts were also fascinating. Vera’s figure would move Venus to envy, and yet, the exact contour of her breasts told Oak that she had indeed breastfed her only child.
Vera held her embroidery hoop up to the light of the candelabra on the mantel. “What is a parhelion?”
“A sun dog, a windgall. A little fragment of a rainbow that parallels the sun, especially in early morning or early evening. The sailors say a sun dog presages high wind. The farmers claim it’s a harbinger of rain.”
“Either way, it portends trouble. Mrs. Treeble is a pleasant sort.”
The subject had changed—or had it? “And you had a friendly chat free of the company of children?”
Vera rolled up her work and stashed it in her workbasket, the movements more forceful than mere linen deserved.
“More or less. Mrs. Treeble had to remind me that Dirk referred to me as his maid of the shires. She used the term three times, as if goading me to put aside my mourning attire.”
“Put aside your mourning attire—half-mourning at home, I might add—and do what?” Pity the age that had not yet discovered firelight, for it rendered Vera’s complexion luminous, and her hair… Painting her hair by firelight accurately would be impossible. Perhaps with a thousand tiny brushstrokes in myriad colors, viewed at a distance…
“Put aside my mourning and resume being some sort of ideal of rural innocence, despite having a six-year-old child, mind you. If Tamsin hadn’t been with us, I would have shortened the call considerably. Mrs. Treeble didn’t mean anything by her prattling, and that made it all the worse.” Vera rose and took up a candle snuffer from the mantel. “I am being ridiculous.”
Oak wished she hadn’t moved, but added a few quick strokes to the page anyway. “What is ridiculous about resenting a label you never chose, one that no longer fits, if it ever did?”
“I am not a paragon of rural innocence. As a girl, I used to hold the mares in the breeding shed. They stayed calmer for me than for my brothers, who were occupied handling the stallion. I had no idea women were banned from such activities until I mentioned this to my husband. He was equal parts fascinated and appalled.”
She brought the snuffer down over four candles in succession, dousing one of the three candelabra in the room. Shadows deepened, and Oak realized he was in the presence of a complicated emotion with old roots.
“I’m surprised your step-mother allowed you to