“Nay. They be Clark and Donovan.”
I perked up at the mention of Will’s other manservant. “What did you think of Donovan?”
A coy smile brightened her face. “Oh, he’s a bit o’ all right.”
“Lucy,” I scolded, blushing at the admiring tone of her voice.
“What? A big, strappin’ lad like that. I couldna help but notice.”
“And do the other maids notice him as well?” I asked, interested despite myself.
“Oh, aye.”
I watched her in the mirror as she tied a ribbon around the end of my braid, not having failed to miss the telltale flush of attraction cresting her cheeks. “Well, just be careful there,” I felt compelled to warn her. At Gairloch Castle she was relatively safe from men with dishonorable intentions, surrounded as she was by three brothers and a handful of female relatives to look after her. At Dalmay House, she had only me.
“I will, m’lady. But no worries. He’s no’ likely to fancy me.”
I wasn’t so certain about that. With her creamy skin and buxom figure, Lucy was attractive enough to draw most men’s attention. I wondered if her sheltered existence had made her blind to that.
“Did Donovan mention anything about his former employment?” I asked, thinking back to what Gage had told me about him having some kind of medical experience.
Lucy helped me pull my nightdress over my head. “Nay, m’lady. Did ye want me to ask?”
She seemed far too eager to have any excuse to talk to the man. “Only if it seems natural to do so,” I told her, not wanting the girl to seem too keen.
“Aye, m’lady.” Her eyes twinkled. “He willna ken why I’m askin’,” she promised, misunderstanding my reason for concern.
I didn’t correct her, figuring the maid would take more care if she thought concealing my interest was the reason I requested her discretion. She helped me into my warm, midnight-blue wrapper, and then I dismissed her to seek her own bed.
I wandered the room restlessly, my mind too busy yet for sleep. The chamber assigned to me was swathed in shades of pale pink and warm chocolate brown in the most sumptuous of fabrics—velvet and silk and satin. The walls were hung with ivory silk speckled with pink flowers, which matched nearly perfectly the pearlescent pink marble of the fireplace. I did not know whether Michael and Laura had elected to place me in a premier chamber, or if all the bedrooms were decorated so lavishly.
A handsome landscape held pride of place over the hearth, depicting the sweep of a bay and the softly lapping waves of the sea. The tumbled rocks of the cliffs were shaded with sweeps of palest pink, tying the piece to the room’s color palette. I studied the painting, wishing momentarily that I was as skilled at bringing to life earth and sea and sky as I was at capturing it in the human face and form. Then I brushed the thought away, reminding myself to be grateful for the gifts I had been given instead of wasting my time longing for the things I couldn’t change.
Will tried to teach me that—the summer he spent as my drawing master.
I crossed my arms over my chest and moved to the window, lifting aside the heavy velvet drapes to peer out at the moonlit countryside beyond. A wide swath of lawn stretched before me, ending in the thick shadows of forest that extended inland toward Dalmay village, and then farther on to Queensferry. Will would have liked such a setting.
During that summer, which seemed so long ago now, Will had enjoyed teaching my lessons outdoors whenever he could. On warm, dry days, whether the sky was clear and blue or piled with towering clouds, he had escorted me out to one of the neighboring hillsides. Sometimes we carried easels and canvases, and sometimes merely sketchbooks, but without fail, on fair weather days we trudged across the countryside to capture one scene or another with brushes or charcoal.
At first I had hated those excursions, wanting to remain inside engrossed in my latest effort at portraiture. Painting people was safe, comfortable, and I felt relatively competent in the task. Landscapes were a different matter. They left me feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, and wholly inadequate. After a day spent sketching the River Tweed as it rambled past St. Cuthbert’s Church or painting the towering oaks of Dunstan Wood, I was left certain I had as little talent as my past tutor, Signor Riotta, claimed.
Then one afternoon in late June, after yet another failure to capture any sense of light or movement or life in the landscape before me, I threw my paintbrush down with a cry of exasperation. I was tempted to tear the canvas from the easel, throw it to the ground, and stomp on it, but for the fact that it took time and effort to prepare new canvases, and I had no desire to waste the ones already stretched and coated with noxious gesso.