A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,59
artistic aspirations, and—when Alexander had begun to shuffle from foot to foot at Vera’s side—he’d casually hoisted the boy onto his hip.
“Note the change in perspective,” Oak had said quietly to Alexander. “When you are eye to eye with a subject, the scene is different.”
Alexander had peered about as if he’d suddenly found himself cast ashore on the fair isle of Lilliput. All the while, Oak conversed politely with Vera’s neighbors, even bowing slightly to wish Grandmother Stiles a good day.
When the time had come to return to Merlin Hall, Oak had suggested that he and Alexander walk the distance. To a man in his prime, two miles was a pleasant ramble. For a six-year-old boy…
“Alexander, are you up to that challenge?” Vera had asked.
“Yes, ma’am.” He’d nodded so vigorously his cap had come down over his eyes.
“That settles it.” Oak had straightened Alexander’s cap and put the boy on his feet. “Let’s mind the mud puddles, and off we go. Do you know any tramping songs, lad? A good rousing hymn might do in deference to the Lord’s day.”
They’d ambled out of the churchyard, Alexander marching along as if he, too, considered a two-mile hike a mere ramble. The sight of the man and boy in earnest discussion as they struck off across the green had brought an ache to Vera’s throat.
Upon returning home from services, Vera had heard her son before she’d seen him. She’d been sitting at her desk, trying to pen a polite note to Richard Longacre, when through the open window, she’d caught a snippet of song.
* * *
There’s many men get store of treasure
yet they live like ignorant knaves:
In this world they have no pleasure
the more they have, the more they crave.
* * *
Oak Dorning had a fine baritone, though the lyrics he’d sung—with Alexander’s descant kiting above the melody—were from a drinking song Vera’s brothers were fond of. She’d watched as man and boy strode up the drive, Alexander’s cheeks ruddy, his singing more robust than musical. Dirk had died too soon to have any moments with Alexander such as this, a Sabbath hour stolen to teach his son a hearty tune, an hour wandering the countryside on a summer day.
Vera had missed moments such as this, but watching Oak keep a pace that Alexander could manage, she vowed that she’d do better at appreciating her children, and appreciating Alexander especially.
And now, surrounded by Dirk’s art in Oak’s studio, Vera was hard put to appreciate her late husband at all.
“I grant you,” she said, “the paintings are lovely. They are fine art, and they deserve to be appreciated as such, but I cannot sell them, and thus they must be stored out of sight.”
Oak lowered himself into the second wing chair, and as often happened when another man’s hands would have been idle, he took up a sketch pad and pencil.
“I could frame those paintings such that the signature is obscured. Nobody would know who created them save for the purchasers. Turn your chin half an inch—yes.”
Vera had grown accustomed to Oak’s sketching habit. Over the past week, he’d sketched while she’d read to him in the late-night privacy of her bedroom. He’d sketched while they talked about her neighbors and family. He’d sketched while he’d acquainted her—by image and anecdote—with his many siblings.
“The signature is half of what makes any painting valuable,” Vera replied. “If you obscure the signature, you diminish the value.”
“Not necessarily. The signature is the easiest part of a painting to forge. Another half inch to the left… Thank you. I would utterly adore doing your portrait, and I assure you I would render my subject fully clothed.”
“May I tell you something?”
His pencil stilled. “Of course.”
“You asked if I was concerned that Dirk might have painted similar portraits of me, not fully clothed.”
Quiet patience was one of Oak Dorning’s many strengths. He regarded Vera with a steady composure that helped her complete her thought.
“Now that you’ve raised the possibility,” she went on, “I am almost certain Dirk painted nudes of me. I’d awaken and find him studying me, though I always slept in a nightgown. He did come upon me at my bath more than once, and when another husband might have withdrawn, he found excuses to linger before leaving me my privacy. I never thought anything of it, because he seemed to think nothing of it. We were married, after all.”
Oak shifted forward so Vera sat knee to knee with him.