Hetherington wound an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. 'Do you know,' he said, 'much as I am fond of William, I am mortally tired of talking about his love life. I would much prefer to talk about my own.'
'You have problems too?' she asked, laying her head on his shoulder.
'Yes, certainly,' he agreed. 'I am feeling in dire need of making love to my wife, and yet I find myself in a room that is likely to be entered by a nurse at any moment.'
'Let us go to our room, by all means,' Elizabeth said, 'and I shall see if I can think of a solution on the way.'
He nudged her head away from his shoulder and grinned down at her. 'I expected shocked protests about what the servants would think if we disappeared to our bedchamber together in the middle of the afternoon,' he said.
'Will they know, do you think?' she asked, coloring. 'It is just that a week was such a long time, Robert.'
He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. 'You proved that to me last night, darling,' he said. 'Come and show me again. Take my arm, ma'am, so that we will present a respectable appearance to any servants who happen to be lurking about.'
Helen had left the house as soon as she could after breakfast. She had hastily gathered together her painting materials, donned a warm cloak, and fled to the grove below the lower lawn, out of sight of the house. She was horribly embarrassed and confused. She wished she might never have to go back to the house. She did momentarily consider the idea of dropping her supplies and keeping on walking or running, but it was a stupid urge, of course. She had nowhere to go, and neither belongings nor money with her. Anyway, she had run or avoided her problems for too long.
She might have known that William would come with the marquess. It had probably been planned all along. But she felt betrayed to think that Elizabeth had said nothing to her, and even more so to think that the Hetheringtons must have told him about her condition. She had been inclined at first to judge them very harshly. But she was tired of always thinking the worst of people. They had doubtless thought that they were acting for the best. William was their friend and they must have concluded that he had a right to know the truth. And indeed he did. She had been wrong to keep it from him for so long.
But these thoughts did not make the awkwardness of the situation any the more bearable. She had hardly been able to look at William since his arrival. That letter had been proving hard enough to write. But to meet him face-to-face, knowing that he knew, was proving to be an impossible situation, especially when the marquess and his wife were always present too. She had found herself unable to utter a word to any of them since the afternoon before, or even to look at them.
William was not helping matters at all, either. It was true that he had spoken to her, even come close to her and touched her, when he arrived. But that had been the wrong time. She had been so surprised that she had been quite unable to respond. Since then he had said nothing. He had been almost as silent as she during dinner the evening before, and during breakfast this morning. Was he regretting his decision to come? Was his silence proof that he had come only out of a sense of obligation, knowing that she was with child?
Now she did not know what to do. There was no longer any point in trying to write to him. Yet she could not imagine herself summoning enough courage to approach him and talk to him. It was just too hard a problem to solve.
An hour after she had arrived in the chosen spot, Helen began to paint. Fortunately, it was not a very cold day. The sun shone from a clear sky, bringing the suggestion of warmth even if not the reality. She huddled inside her cloak for a while, but later she threw it back over her shoulders so that she could have greater freedom to use her brush. She had resolved that she would not think for several hours, at least, and soon she had succeeded in becoming quite absorbed in the process of creating with paint what she had seen with her eyes and felt in her heart.
William Mainwaring had left the house after luncheon. He was feeling deuced embarrassed and not at all sure that he had done the right thing to come. He had hoped that a week in the country would have calmed Nell down, made her better prepared to receive him and listen to him. Yet she had appeared to be very angry both when she saw him and since. He must talk to her, of course, and alone. He had waited for her to come back during the morning. He had intended to ask her to walk outside with him, and somehow force her to communicate. But she had not returned, even for luncheon. Finally he could wait no longer. There was no point in having come if he was going to be afraid to approach her. He must go and find her and hope that he could somehow break through the wall of silence that she had set up between them the day before.
He did not know where she had gone; he had not watched her leave the house that morning. But he did know that she had been going to paint. She could not be too far away. It took him a half-hour to find her, but as soon as he saw her through the trees of the grove he knew that he should have guessed she would come among the trees. He walked closer. She must be very absorbed in what she did if she had not heard him, he thought.
He stopped some distance behind her and leaned one shoulder against the trunk of a tree. Yes, she was absorbed in her work. Her cloak had been thrown back over her shoulders so that it could offer warmth to no more than her spine. And the dress she wore underneath, although made of wool, was not heavy enough to protect her from the autumn chill. Yet she seemed quite unaware of any discomfort. She wore no bonnet and her hair was in wild disarray as it had been those times when he had first known her. The ribbon that had held her curls away from her face was lying abandoned on the grass beside her. Her face, which he could see partly in profile, was flushed, whether with the cold or with the intensity of her efforts, he could not tell.
Her dress was not ragged and her feet were not bare, but it was the old Nell, his little wood nymph, who stood there, quite unaware of his presence. He folded his arms and watched her for a long time. He did not want to break the spell of the moment. He did not want her to turn and see him and become again the cold, bitter young woman that she had been since they had met in London.
Finally she made an impatient gesture with head and hand, flinging a lock of hair behind her ear. And in so doing, she turned her head enough that she became aware of his presence behind her. They stared at each other in silence for a moment.
'William,' she said at last, 'how long have you been standing there?'
He pushed his shoulder away from the tree and strolled toward her. 'For some time,' he said. 'I hated to disturb you. You seemed as intent on your painting as you were in studying water when I first met you.'
'I have always loved painting more than any other activity,' she said. 'And I have discovered that painting does not have to be insipid and decorative. That picture in the marquess's house-the one by Mr. Turner in the hallway-is magnificent. It has filled me with despair and with hope.'
Mainwaring discovered that he was almost holding his breath. Where was the coldness, the aloofness? It surely would return at any moment. But he wanted to prolong this moment of near-friendliness. He looked at the painting on her easel. And then he gazed at it, transfixed.
'You have missed one detail,' he said at last.
'Have I?' she asked doubtfully. 'I am sure you are right. What is it?'
'There should be a little wood nymph sitting up in the branches of the oak tree,' he said. 'This branch, I think.' He pointed.
'Oh.' Her face relaxed unexpectedly into a smile. 'That is ridiculous. Is the water right, William? I am not at all sure.'
'I can almost feel it,' he said. 'Yes, you were quite right. All those colors are necessary. Together they capture the stream exactly as it is. How could you possibly do it all so well from memory?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'In fact, until this moment I do not believe I even realized that I was not painting the scene before my eyes.'
