Gwyneth took a step back from her canvas and smiled as she lifted the stick from the pot and saw the crimson within. “It looks perfect, Mr. Lane, thank you. Let us hope it dries correctly.”
“If not, let me know and I shall try a different ratio.” Father gave her a warm smile, full of contentment at getting to put his love for chemistry to use, and motioned to Mother. “Are you ready, my love? We don’t want to be late to Mr. Matthews’s.”
Mother put a slip of paper in her volume of Shakespeare. “Of course. Gwyneth, do you need anything before we go?”
A moment later, after the shake of Gwyneth’s head, his parents took their leave and silence descended upon the garden. Thad let it settle and wrap its arms around them. Let the birdsong filter into his consciousness. Breathed in the scent of the herbs Rosie had planted. Felt the bite of bark against his back. And watched her.
Watched as she turned fully back to the painting. Watched as she dipped that brush into blood-red paint.
Watched as tears welled in her eyes and her face pulled into a mask of taut agony.
He pushed off from the tree. For the last five days, he had looked only at her. Her as she wielded paint and brush, not the canvas onto which she put it. But something whispered that it was time. Time to see the painting.
Finally, after an eternity of working and mixing and glazing and drying, the world on the canvas began to pulse. Only then did she know a piece was nearing completion. When she felt the thud of blood through veins and timed each stroke accordingly. When light and shadow joined together and danced. When the elusive vision she had been chasing stayed, solidified, and became.
When the critical shade waited, trial after trial of this hue and that finally giving way to the right color. The right preparation. The right use of sublimers and levigating mills and mullars, the right consistency of oil and pigment and turpentine.
All for red. Crimson red, pure and bright, tending neither toward orange nor purple. No vermilion, no cinnabar. No rose nor carmine. Red. Red that gleamed like a ruby. Red that bespoke England and the army. Red that meant life and its loss.
Her vision blurred, forcing her hand to pause. No. No, not now. She could not let the world double and waver. This moment, of all the moments of the past months, she needed clarity.
Swallowing, blinking, and sucking in a long draft of air, she waited. There. No more haze. Just the canvas, every inch covered with paint. The garden outside Papa’s window, misty with greens and yellow. Verdigris, sap green, and the terra verte Mr. Lane had helped her perfect. King’s yellow, oker, and sienna unburnt.
The desk, the shelves, Papa’s hair in shades of brown. Extract of liquorice, asphaltum, and umber.
The play of light with white lead and crushed pearl. The score of shadow in lampblack and Indian ink.
Scalloped edges and intricate curves. A window to a world forever lost.
And now red. Brighter than the jacket that painted-Papa wore, underscoring, overcoming. There, here, dripping, staying. Hidden, always hidden.
Always there. Taunting. Haunting.
Shaking.
She jerked her arm away before she could ruin it all, and the brush fell from her fingers and rolled down her dress. White turned crimson, with slashes and gashes on the swath moments ago still pure. Just like that, ruination and destruction.
“Gwyneth.”
Thad. When had he moved? Gwyneth lifted her head to find him beside her and realized his hand rested on her back. But he didn’t look at her. His gaze remained latched on the canvas, moving over it as if following a path. Reading a line. Darting and jumping, tracing the exact journey her brush had taken, the trail of colors in the order she had applied them.
His face went tight. The hand on her back slid down to her waist and anchored there. When finally he looked to her, his eyes burned like a candle’s flame. “What happened to him?”
Trembling, quaking that she couldn’t still. She looked to the painting. How did he see? There was no blade, no pool of blood. Just Papa, standing as he had been before the shelves she had practiced with pencil, behind the desk with its familiar scratches and dings. Papa, tall and strong.
Papa, pierced through. But Thad wasn’t to see that. He wasn’t to see the slight variation in shade between jacket and blood, so easily attributed to light and shadow. He wasn’t to realize the look upon his face was that one moment between fear and pain.
“Gwyneth.” He tightened his grip on her, demanding that her gaze return to his, making the tremors quicken. He searched her eyes until she felt sure he saw every thought, every fear, every monster hiding within. And he looked as though it rent him to pieces as it had done her. “He is dead?”