Page 8 of A Brush With Love at Brookview Hall (Noble Hearts)

Seven

JULIA

T he first indication Julia had that something was amiss was when Selina and Harriet came into the school room the following morning.

They ought to have been at the studio for their painting instruction.

Cornelius had not been at breakfast, but he often ate much earlier than the family, taking his coffee and some food to his studio to enjoy while he caught the very early light he said he needed.

But for him not to be waiting for the two young ladies and their companion was quite unthinkable.

And yet, he simply was not there.

Julia set the girls to work with a volume of Greek myths, suitably selected and redacted for the delicate sensibilities of young women, of course, with directions to choose a scene and draw it.

That would keep them busy while she worked with the younger children.

It would suffice for the morning, when he could make his excuses.

But neither did he appear after their luncheon to guide Annie and the boys with their more rudimentary drawings. There was no note, no message. Not a word.

Julia began to worry. Had he taken ill? Had some accident occurred that prevented him from discharging his duties? With each passing moment that he did not appear, her apprehension grew.

At last, the day’s lessons were over and the children sent off to amuse themselves or to play in the gardens under the eye of Miss Kingstone and the night nurse.

Julia all but tore across the lawns towards the cottage, dreading what disaster she might find there.

She envisaged Cornelius, face white and clammy, burning with fever, or crushed under a fallen wall, or scorched by the fire.

Something dire must have happened for him to leave off all his classes.

Her heart pounded more loudly than her feet as they carried her, with all possible haste, to the studio.

But all seemed quiet.

The door, which he kept open while he worked, was locked, and when she walked around to the side of the building with the great bank of windows, she saw nothing but darkness within.

There was no flickering fire, no lamp burning on his desk, no smell of a recent blaze. Her shouts and calls met with silence.

Only the dim outline of his large easel in the centre of the room suggested that he had not abandoned Brookview Hall entirely.

There remained the possibility, however, that he had been hurt or taken ill, and was unable to move or summon help. He might need her, and she would not fail him. Steeling herself, Julia dashed back to the house and summoned the nerve to tap at Mr Derriscott’s study door.

“Miss Lyddon!” He looked up from his book in surprise. “Is something amiss? The children…?”

“I do apologise for disturbing you, sir. The children are all perfectly well. But I am concerned for Mr Robertson. He was not at the studio this morning to work with Miss Selina, nor did he come to instruct the children. His studio seems dark and abandoned… I hope he is not ill. Has he been seen at all today?”

The words all tumbled out in a single breath.

Thankfully, Mr Derriscott did not chastise her for interrupting him, or for expressing inappropriate concern about the artist. Instead, he summoned the housekeeper to check the man’s chambers, and when they proved to be empty, suggested looking for him once more in the studio.

“I have a second key to the door. Take Simmons,” he advised, referring to the head footman. “Advise me if something is amiss.”

He handed over the key and turned back to his book.

With more trepidation this time, despite the presence of Simmons, and with a great deal more alarm, Julia returned to the studio cottage. She banged loudly at the door, and then, hearing not a sound from inside, slid the key into the lock. It turned smoothly and the door swung open.

Inside, all was silent.

“See if anybody is in the other rooms, or in the upper rooms,” she told the servant. “I shall check the main studio.”

She had been in here several times, and had taken more than a casual glance about, but never had she really explored the space.

Now she moved more deliberately, taking note of everything she had glossed past before.

There, on the little table by the window, was a small articulated wooden doll, to be positioned like a person as a miniature model.

Beside it was a small ceramic urn, whose likeness had been captured on a series of pieces of paper by Selina, with varying attempts at shading and creating a sense of depth, and some dried leaves, also having been rendered in charcoal on paper.

Another small table held a selection of the pastel sticks he had shown her, as well as a case containing the bladders of paint that she had seen him open and blend on his palette to create the wide range of colours he used in his art.

It was magical, seeing these splots and dabs from ten or twelve little pouches transform, when mixed in the perfect proportions, into every imaginable shade.

There, on the wider table beside his large easel, lay the array of brushes he used.

Some, she now saw, were thick-shafted with heavy bristles set in a broad line; others were delicate things, with only a few hairs tapering to a fine point for the tiniest details.

There were his charcoals, his pencils, the drawing pads of various sizes, and the paint-splattered stool he perched upon as he worked.

The air was heavy, as well, with the scents of his craft. As well as the thick aroma of the oil paints, Julia could pick out the sharp tang of the turpentine he used to clean the brushes and the earthy odour of linseed oil.

A rough wooden case in one corner proved to contain the tools he might need to stretch a canvas onto a frame, or repair one that had come loose, and propped up against the wall on the far side of his small desk, tucked beneath a large canvas that had been prepared but not yet begun, she found a collection of smaller still-lifes, no more than a few inches across, presumably to demonstrate his skill or to sell.

Cornelius’ current work, the seascape he had shown her before, held pride of place on his large canvas, and Selina’s latest attempt, showing great improvement already, perched upon the smaller easel beside it.

Everything seemed exactly as it should be.

But of Cornelius himself, there was no sign.

Julia looked again into all the corners and behind the furniture that had been pushed against the walls, in case he had fallen.

The room was large, but not so overcrowded that a grown man could be hidden somewhere.

No legs protruded from behind the pile of canvases, no outflung arm emerged from under the chair where she sat for her portrait sessions.

She looked behind the frame that supported the background cloth, and peeked beneath the desk.

She dared, even, to examine the papers on his escritoire, in case he had given some indication of his whereabouts. Again, there was nothing.

“Nobody is upstairs, Miss,” Simmons called from the ladder-like stairs that led to the loft.

“And I checked the cooking room and storage rooms. Not a soul. I even looked up the chimney in case…” He swallowed and did not complete that thought, but Julia understood him.

In case the artist fell victim to some black mood. She let out a rush of air in relief.

But if Cornelius was not here, alive or otherwise, wherever could he be?

The return to the house was slower than had been the rush to the cottage. Simmons had no more idea about what might have happened than had Julia, and no amount of batting thoughts back and forth resulted in clarity. Julia thanked him for his assistance and went to return the key to Mr Derriscott.

That gentleman, however, was not in his study, nor in any of the places Julia looked, and she resolved to keep the key in her pocket until she was able to find him, perhaps after dinner.

Such plans, however, were overturned by a cry from the gardens.

Rushing from the small parlour to the doors that opened onto the back lawns, Julia saw Selina come racing to the house, her ashen face an image of distress, her friend Harriet a few steps behind.

“Come quickly, someone. Help! Charlie has had an accident. We need a cart or wagon!”

The customary tranquillity of Brookview Hall now exploded into a frenzy of activity.

Almost at once, a small army of servants materialised before her, with Simmons as their general.

He sent two strong men with a handcart in the direction that Selina indicated, before sending two maids to find the housekeeper and request that she be prepared for an injury.

Another servant was sent off to call the doctor from the nearby village.

They had all been out in the fields, Selina explained.

She and Harriet were walking near the line of trees by the river, while Annie tagged along behind them.

The boys were playing some game involving sticks and a ball.

Then Roger declared he could jump clear across the shallow stream nearby, which Charlie, of course, had to try as well.

After two successful such leaps, Charlie slipped and fell into the burbling rill, hitting his head.

They had been unable to rouse him, and Miss Kingstone was quite soaked and chilled to the bone after pulling the boy out of the water.

“They were all in a terrible state, weeping and crying out, and I could think of nothing but to run here and call for help,” Selina concluded. Her face was still white, despite the exertion of her dash.

“It was exactly the proper thing to do,” replied Julia in her most comforting voice. “Go inside, the two of you, and ask for some tea to calm yourselves, and more for Miss Kingstone. I shall look for your father.”

“Father said earlier he was going to one of the storehouses,” the young lady said. “I do not know when he will return.”

This occasioned another request to Simmons, who now sent out two more boys in search of their master.

By the time the bedraggled party of children and nursemaid returned to the house, with Charlie carried carefully on a plank of wood in the wagon, the sun was nearly at the horizon.

The little boy was awake and most unhappy, and Julia sent the other children off to dine with the night nurse while she first tended Charlie’s injuries and then, after the doctor arrived, went to look in on Miss Kingstone.

At what time, exactly, Mr Derriscott arrived back at the house, she did not know, but he was sequestered with his son for much of the evening, while Julia stayed in the nursery.

The next morning, Charlie was quite ill.

He had slept poorly and awakened several times with a bad headache, and had taken a chill from the cold water.

The doctor proclaimed the lad to be in no real danger, but the little boy nevertheless commanded all Miss Kingstone’s attention, while Julia gave all her time to the other children, whose concern for Charlie and whose agitation at this disruption of their usual activities made their classes particularly challenging.

It was hopeless trying to teach her planned lessons.

Roger kept bursting into tears and then growing angry because boys don’t cry, and Annie had a tantrum, which Julia had not seen since her earliest days at Brookview Hall, when the girl was but a child.

Even Selina and Harriet fell into a disagreement, and it became clear that nobody was in a mind to learn anything at all.

Eventually, Julia had to be satisfied with a series of games and stories, and very carefully controlled excursions into the gardens.

For two days everybody fretted about little Charlie, who was improving slowly, but who was still rather ill, and the disappearance of Cornelius Robertson was almost forgotten.

And then, on the third morning after his disappearance, there he was once more, standing in his muddy boots at the schoolroom door and demanding why his pupils were not at the studio, as if nothing strange at all had occurred.