Page 4 of A Brush With Love at Brookview Hall (Noble Hearts)

Three

CORNELIUS

G ood heavens! What had he got himself into?

Cornelius tried to keep his expression neutral as he took in the sea of faces around him. He had known the Derriscotts had a number of children, but being told about them was a very different matter to seeing them before him.

Miss Selina, the young lady he had been specifically asked to instruct, had a clear talent.

Oh, she was missing some skills and particular methods, to be sure, and Cornelius suspected she had never received any formal instruction at her craft, but these could be taught, and the lass would go on to produce some fine works.

She looked at him with eager eyes and seemed more than pleased at his initial suggestions; she would be a pleasure to instruct.

Of the others, Cornelius was less sanguine.

Miss Selina’s friend was also to take instruction from him, as she was living with the family for the time being.

Mr Derriscott had mentioned something about her parents being abroad, the details of which had seemed rather unimportant for the moment.

She was no artist, but perhaps she could be guided to produce a creditable seascape or the like.

And then there were the younger ones: A girl, at that unremarkable age between childhood and maturity, when she is too old to play the games of the nursery and too young to be with the adults, and two boys who would clearly rather be running in the fields and catching lizards and frogs than listening to an instructor muttering at them.

What on earth was he to do with them? The smallest—Charlie—had seemed fascinated at least. Perhaps this little scrap of a man had enough enthusiasm to atone for his pudgy fingers, and a great deal of art was born of passion, even if it needed a vigorous application of technique to sing. There might be some joy there.

But their governess! Oh, she would be a trial.

All that talk of spelling and arithmetic, of schedules and rigour. That might be fine and good for her lessons, the dry assortment of rules and rote that all children were subjected to. But to try to impose that same set of restrictions on him? No, that would never do.

Surely, she understood that art could not be put in a box, to be unpackaged and examined like a butterfly on a pin or a Latin sentence in need of parsing, to be picked apart until there was no meaning left in the pile of subjunctives and accusatives.

No, it must be released from its bounds, allowed to fly free from the specimen box, to flit through wildflower-filled meadows, to dance in a frenzy of adverbs and adjectives, rid of the chains of grammar, to breathe in allusion and breathe out poetry.

Still, his artist’s eye could not discount her so easily. She might be an unimaginative martinet, but she was not unworthy of being looked at.

He glanced at her now as she fussed about with the younger boys.

Was it her figure that captured his attention, slim enough while still being round in all the right places?

Was it her dark, glossy hair, caught up in a tight knot at the back of her neck, or perhaps the expression in her dark eyes, inscrutable and mysterious?

He could not even guess her age, for while her features and the contour of her face were young, her stern demeanour gave her the gravitas of years.

Was she twenty? Twenty-five? Surely not much more.

Her carriage was upright, giving the impression of greater height than she possessed, and her movements—from what he had seen thus far—were elegant and economical.

She had no small share of beauty, if one liked black hair on white skin, and something about her cried out to be painted.

He wondered, abstractly, if she would sit for him. He wished to mount an exhibition, at the suggestion of his friend Peter de Wint, and a few portraits would sit well with his collection of landscapes.

A tug at his hand ended his wool-gathering, and Cornelius looked down into young Charlie’s eager eyes.

“Can you draw me?” the lad asked. “Please!”

“Do not bother Mr Robertson,” the governess chided, but the little boy was too ingenuous to resist.

“Very well. Hand me my bag, the large black one by the door.”

The child ran to do his bidding, and Cornelius withdrew a large pad of sketching paper and, from a smaller pocket, a piece of charcoal. This he could do.

“Now I need you to stand very, very still. Can you do that?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I can stand still.” Charlie was almost bouncing on his toes in excitement, but he somehow contrived not to move—too much!

Cornelius studied the boy’s face, found the lines and shadows, the curve of his cheek and the spot where the light reflected off his eyes, and then, with a few deft strokes, let his charcoal do the work.

“Why, that is remarkable!”

He had not noticed the governess move across the carpet to observe him, but now she was standing just to his side, watching over his shoulder as he rendered the little boy’s likeness.

“I am an artist, madam,” he replied, keeping his voice as flinty as possible.

“Oh, the drawing is very fine. But that is not what I meant. You somehow contrived to keep Charlie still for more than a few seconds.”

There was not a hint of a smile on her face, but something in her had thawed.

Cornelius decided he might ask her to sit for him after all.

Cornelius’ first task was to set the children at some project, so he could examine their work and decide how best to instruct each. From the younger two, he expected little more than line drawings that bore no resemblance to their models, but every palace must first have a foundation.

With his students busy with their pencils, overseen by the nursemaid who had introduced herself as Miss Kingstone, he turned his attention to the governess.

His first impressions had been misleading, for once he had made his entry, she had regained control of the youngsters quickly and had maintained it without raising her voice. Rigid and unimaginative she might be, but she seemed effective in her role.

“Mr Derriscott mentioned you by function, but not by name,” he said, once the two of them were able to converse. “Am I to call you Ma’am?”

“You may call me Miss Lyddon, as do the children.”

Lyddon. He thought he knew that name. Some glimmer of a memory tickled his mind, but he could not grab it. Not now. It would come in time, he hoped.

“Very well, Miss Lyddon. I do understand that you have lessons to impart to these little scamps. Shall we discuss when we are to have our time with them? What other special masters do they have? Is there a music instructor, or a dancing teacher?”

She raised her eyes to meet his. They were deep brown, as rich as the strong coffee he loved in the mornings, not muddy or stained.

He instinctively began wondering what pigments he would have to blend to achieve that colour, so dark and yet so clear.

He forced his glance away before she noticed him staring.

“We do have two other masters from the town a few miles away, who attend us once or twice a week. I teach the younger children the pianoforte, but my skills are rudimentary, and Miss Annie has time with a very fine musician on a regular basis. He instructs Miss Selina and Miss Harriet as well, although they are not particularly interested students. I teach dancing, and the pianoforte master plays for us. The young ladies have been visiting the village for a year, to refine their skills with others of their class and abilities, under the tutelage of a dancing master there. We must take their absence into account. I am competent to instruct the children in Latin and French, although we have a Frenchman come twice a week to converse, to perfect the children’s fluency and pronunciation.

He is an educated merchant who arrived on our shores during the wars. He is the other master.”

“And the boys are to have no tutor? I believe their brother is away at school.”

Miss Lyddon laughed, a dry and humourless sound.

“No, we are too far from any large centres to attract a tutor of any quality. Masters Roger and Charlie will join their brother at school when they are old enough. Until then, I am deemed adequate for their educational needs.” She stared into some space that only she could see.

“The girls only need enough education to manage a house and exhibit some great accomplishment to attract husbands. It was enough of a chore to convince Mr Derriscott that they should learn Latin with their brothers.”

“A language which you speak?”

That brittle laugh came again.

“One does not speak Latin as much as understand it. There are no convenient Roman emperors living in Polperro to ride here twice a week to converse. But yes, it is a language I know well enough—as well as any student must know it for his lectures at university. My father?—”

She stopped short.

“I was fortunate enough to be allowed to learn as a child.” She clamped her jaw shut.

Miss Lyddon would be a difficult block of ice to thaw; but the more Cornelius considered it, the more he needed her to sit for a portrait. Something about her tugged at him. He needed to discover more about this stern, beautiful woman.

At that moment, one of the boys let out a whoop.

“I have finished! Come and see, come and see!” That was Charlie, the little one. The boy pushed a piece of paper under Cornelius’ nose, and shuffled on tiny feet, waiting for the pronouncement of excellence.

It was—perhaps—a horse. Or a dog. Or an elephant.

“Do you like my lion? Do you? We read a book about lions. Are they big? Have you ever seen one? I like lions.”

Ah. A lion.

“It is an admirable picture, indeed. Let us see if we can make it better still.”

Oh heavens, this was going to be a challenge indeed!