Wonders of the Invisible World (9 page)

The only wildlife he found on the other side of the wall was Emma and Bram Wilding, walking together toward the gate.

“Ah, Bonham,” Wilding said, with a faint smile in his eyes. “How good of you to come and visit me. Miss Slade is just leaving.”

Ned looked at her. She had colored at the sight of him, but other than a trifle embarrassed, she seemed quite pleased to see him.

“I’m sorry I can’t stay,” he told Wilding with satisfaction. “I have an appointment to escort Miss Slade through the park.”

“So she told me when I tried to persuade her to accept some supper. Another time, perhaps, Miss Slade. I will see you tomorrow at noon?”

“Unless my brother needs—”

“Now, Miss Slade,” Wilding interrupted gently. “We discussed this. I need my Boudicca. I will be more grateful than you can imagine for your time.”

“I would be happy to join you, Miss Slade,” Ned offered. “I would like to see Mr. Wilding’s work.”

“Oh, yes—”

“Alas, I find it difficult to work when I’m watched. You understand, Mr. Bonham.”

“Perfectly,” Ned assured him, watching the monkey rise on the wall behind Wilding and fling what looked like a chestnut from last autumn’s crop at Wilding’s head. It bounced off its target with a satisfying thump.

“Mr. Wilding,” Emma said, her hands flying to her mouth. Her voice wobbled. “Are you hurt?”

Wilding turned briefly to stare at the monkey as he rubbed his head. “Perfectly fine, I assure you.” He added, his eyes on Ned, “I should tell you that there are occasionally creatures in the garden who might be dangerous if surprised. I need to know exactly when my guests are coming or leaving so that I can have them put away. You were fortunate that I’d already done so before you came in. Didn’t Slade tell you?”

“He did not,” Ned answered, surprised. “Perhaps he thought I would find Miss Slade on the street.”

He offered his arm to Emma, whose face had lost expression.

“Miss Slade,” Wilding said with his charming smile.

“Goodnight, Mr. Wilding,” she said perfunctorily, and went through the gate without a backward glance. “I don’t believe in his dangerous animals,” she whispered when the gate closed behind them. “I think he just said that to keep you away.”

“Why—”

“Mr. Bonham, do you know where Marianne Cameron’s studio is?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Will you please take me there now?”

“Not the park?” he said wistfully.

“I’m sorry.” Her fingers tightened a little on his arm; she added ruefully, “I know none of this makes much sense. But when I speak to Miss Cameron, you’ll understand.”

The women’s studio, which Ned had visited several times, was the second floor of an old warehouse along River Road. Ned smelled paints and turpentine, mold and the lingering odors of mud flats as they climbed the creaky flight of stairs. The stairs ended at a long sweep of floorboard beneath unpainted rafters. Light came from tall windows overlooking the river, inset where doors had once opened in midair for goods to be grappled and winched up for storage off boats in the full tide below. Older windows on the other side gathered the morning light. The vast room was filled with easels, canvases, paints and paper, stools with stained smocks hanging over them. The painters had vanished into the fading light; only Marianne was there, lighting lamps to continue her work.

She looked stricken when she saw Emma, and came to her quickly. “Oh, Miss Slade, I do apologize. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I’m so glad you came here. Hello, Mr. Bonham. Have a stool.”

“Hello, Miss Cameron.” He sat, looking at them puzzledly. “I wish someone would explain what I’ve missed.”

“Mr. Wilding—” Emma began.

“I invited Miss Slade to pose for us—”

“And then Mr. Wilding begged me to pose for him, and I refused because I had promised Miss Cameron, and anyway I wanted to come here and paint—He knew that, and yet he found a way to sabotage our plans.”

Miss Cameron’s broad face flushed. “He offered us an exhibit, Mr. Bonham. A promise to talk to the owner of a new gallery about a women’s show. If we let him have Miss Slade first.”

“Will he keep his promise?” Emma asked grimly.

“As long as he gets what he wants, he will. I felt dreadful giving you up like that, but—it was too much to refuse. I’ve been trying for years to get someone to agree to exhibit us. And he paints wonderfully well; you’ll be pleased with what he makes of you.”

Emma sighed. “But I have to endure his company for hours. I thoroughly dislike him. I didn’t know why at first, but now I do.”

“Has he been rude to you?” Ned asked abruptly. “If he has, he’ll be wearing his painting around his neck.”

“No. He hasn’t. I just feel a bit trapped.”

“And so you have been, and I’ve been complicit in your entrapment,” Miss Cameron said ruefully. “How can I make it up to you? Can you find time to come and paint with us? I won’t charge you for studio space; you can come and go as you please, and see what the rest of us are doing.”

“Yes,” Emma said emphatically. “That’s why I came to talk to you. I would love a corner here to work in. I feel underfoot at my brother’s, and his friends, though terribly interesting, are so terribly distracting. I could paint here in the mornings, then pose for Mr. Wilding in the afternoons...” Her voice trailed away; Ned found her blue eyes on his face as though she had sensed his sudden pang of distress. She was silent a moment, conjecturing; then she added softly, “And in the evenings, Mr. Bonham, you and I can draw one another.”

He said, his odd heartache gone, “I can think of nothing I would like better. Well, actually I can, but that will wait until the fullness of time.”

Miss Cameron eyed them speculatively. “I see you have outplayed us all, Mr. Bonham,” she murmured. “Even the paragon, Mr. Wilding.”

“I was the more fortunate,” he admitted. “Speaking of posing, your brother wants my head for Salome’s platter. Shall I give it to him?”

“What a wonderful idea,” Emma said, laughing. “Yes, I think you should indulge my brother. You can get to know him better and meet all of his disreputable friends.”

“And what is Mr. Wilding making out of you?” Marianne asked her curiously.

“I am Queen Boudicca, about to plunge into my last battle.”

“I wouldn’t have pictured you as a warrior queen,” Marianne said thoughtfully. “May Queen, maybe, or Queen of the Fairies, something with a lot of flowers.”

“Mr. Wilding prefers to set me off with a musty bearskin rug over my shoulders. He claims he shot it in some wilderness or another. Oh, and he says he must put a horse in the painting as well, as soon as he finds the right one.”

She was looking at Ned speculatively as she spoke. So, he realized uneasily, was Miss Cameron.

“Perhaps,” Marianne mused slowly, “when your brother is finished with him.”

“Yes. As what, do you think?”

“Something with dignity,” Ned pleaded, envisioning himself barelegged on a pedestal with a bow in his hand, dressed fetchingly as Cupid, the object of intense and critical female scrutiny.

“The young knight errant, going forth into the world to rescue maidens and do battle with wicked knights who look like Wilding?”

“Can’t I be evil? Just once?”

“Can’t you settle for being triumphant?” Emma asked with such affection and trust in her eyes that he could only be grateful for his fate.

He bowed his head and acquiesced.

“For you.”

Emma found herself whirling through her days like a leaf in a sluice. In the mornings, she went to Marianne’s studio, where she had set up her easel. She drew whatever caught her eye in the endless supply of still life on the studio’s shelves, which held everything from old boots to exotic draperies and vases in which dried grasses, seed pods, and flowers purloined from the park could be arranged. Occasionally, as she worked, someone would come to sketch her. She scarcely noticed. Sometimes she herself drifted through the room, watching the other women work in ink and watercolor, pencil and oil. She confined herself to sketching for a while, to improve her technique. Miss Cameron moved among them now and then, gently suggesting, never criticizing. She was in the midst of an oil, mostly whites and grays and browns, of the river beyond the window, beneath lowering sky, and the boats and ships that moved ceaselessly along it, the buildings on the far shore, and the stone bridge in the distance, tiny figures crossing it the only flecks of brightness in the painting.

While Emma drew, she let her thoughts wander about, searching for a compelling subject to paint. Something simple, she wanted, like Ned’s solstice or Marianne’s river. But with a human face in it, drawing the viewer’s eye and kindling emotions. Whether the face was male or female, mortal or mythical, and what emotions it should evoke, Emma could not decide. She was content for the moment just to be in the company of painters, watching and learning from them, her mind an open door to inspiration, not knowing what face it would wear when it finally came knocking.

Somewhere around midday, the contentment would fray. Mr. Wilding would enter her thoughts and refuse to go away. Finally time would force her to put away pencil and paper, take off her smock, and say goodbye to Miss Cameron, who always looked a little guilty when she left.

“Don’t fret,” Emma told her. “When Mr. Wilding procures the exhibit for us, I’ll be in it, too. That will make up for everything.”

She would return to her brother’s for one of Mrs. Dyce’s excellent and very informal lunches: Adrian fed anyone who happened to be there. Invariably, he and Ned would make her laugh. And then Ned would walk with her through the streets to Wilding’s villa.

Sometimes Mr. Wilding met her at the gate; more often it was a silent, wraithlike servant whose eyes would dart nervously about the garden as he escorted her to the house. He carried a roughhewn walking stick carved out of a tree limb; the polished burl at the top looked formidable.

Curious, she commented on it once; he answered briefly, “In case they left one out of their cages, Miss.”

“One what?” she said incredulously.

He rasped his prickly white chin. “Can’t rightly say, can I, Miss? Whatever they are, he gets them from far away.”

“Are they like the monkey? Or more like big cats?”

“Big,” he conceded. “That they are. But I wouldn’t say either monkey or cat. More like—like—Well, I couldn’t say that either, Miss, since I’ve never seen anything like them in my life. Not even at the zoological gardens, where I have been a time or two in my youth.”

She was silent, willing to doubt they were real, but disturbed by the thought that Wilding was terrifying his servants with mythological monsters.

Mr. Wilding only laughed when she expressed her doubts. “Do you think I’ve conjured up a garden full of harpies and manticores? Of course they’re real. Most are harmless, though they might not look it. Most would run from old Fender.”

“Most?”

“I’m very careful,” he assured her. “I value my friends too much to want them eaten by beasts.”

Friends by the dozens might come to visit, but never, it seemed, while he was working. At mid-afternoon the villa was as still as though it stood in one of the countries whose houses it emulated: the ones that drowsed in heat and light and came alive at night. Mr. Wilding himself painted silently much of the time. From what Emma saw of the painting, it could become a masterwork. Each hair on the bearskin hanging across her shoulders was meticulously recorded by a brush as fine as an eyelash; as a whole the painted pelt, thick and glossy, made her want to run her hand over it, feel its softness.

Her own face emerging out of the canvas slowly, like a figure from a mist, astonished her. It was fierce and lovely, nothing tentative about it that she could recognize.

“That doesn’t look like me at all,” she protested.

He smiled tightly. “Oh, yes, it does. When you look at me.”

“Really?”

“You dislike me, Miss Slade. Your face is quite expressive. Luckily, Boudicca didn’t like her enemies, either; that makes you perfect.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Did you do that deliberately, Mr. Wilding? Make me dislike you for this?”

“No,” he said, surprised. “Turn your head again; you’re out of position. I want very much for you to like me. A little more. Lift your chin. Stare me down. Because I think you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life, and one of the most intelligent and interesting. I hoped—Chin up, Miss Slade; I have come to steal your realm and slay your people. I hoped you would confess to some truer feeling about me.”

“Truer,” she said through rigid jaws.

“You are afraid of me because you are drawn to me. That makes you dislike me. So you turn to the much safer and predictable Mr. Bonham.”

Her jaw dropped; so did her spear-arm. “Mr. Wilding—”

“You asked, Miss Slade,” he said evenly. “Chin up, spear up. Remember the exhibit.”

“You take advantage, Mr. Wilding!”

“No, no. You, after all, have the spear; you can throw it at me any time. I tell you what is in my heart. Can you blame me for that?”

He left her wordless. She could only stare at him as he requested, at once furious and vulnerable, willing to skewer him yet unable to move, while he touched her constantly with his eyes, and his brush stroked every hair on her head and every contour of her body.