“Earlier, when I was fixing your bike, you introduced yourself as Helena Parr.”
“I’m only the daughter of an earl,” she protested. “The ‘lady’ is a courtesy title; no more. I’m nothing in my own right.”
“Aren’t you?” he asked, suddenly serious.
“You know what I mean. It’s something that belongs to my father, not me. That’s why I don’t like to use it. And it does seem rather, well, pretentious. Especially when speaking with an American. Please call me Miss Parr.”
“Would you mind if I called you Ellie instead?”
Oddly enough, she wouldn’t. “No,” she said, and found herself smiling up at him.
“And would you mind if I join you at the beach tomorrow?”
“Not at all. Do you know how to dig for buried treasure? Build a sand castle? The children will expect us all to join in.”
“Does an American know how to play baseball? Of course I do.”
“Then I’ll—”
“Helena, dear, do you mind awfully if we trundle back home?” Aunt Agnes called.
“No, I don’t mind.” She took a step back from Mr. Howard and offered her hand. He shook it firmly, just as he’d shake hands with a man. “Good night, then,” she said.
“Good night, Ellie. See you tomorrow.”
Agnes, normally so chatty at the end of an evening out, complained of a headache as they got into the coupe for the short trip home, and the resulting silence gave Helena a chance to reflect on their dinner with the Murphys and Mr. Howard. She decided that she rather liked him, and not only because he was handsome and interesting and really quite amusing. He was, she reflected, simply unlike any man she’d ever met in her circle of acquaintance at home. He was honest and straightforward, and she hadn’t discerned even a hint of artifice or pretense in his manner.
With the exception of Gerald, whom she knew by virtue of her friendship with Sara, she’d never had a male friend before. There had been her fiancé, and before him a handful of suitors, but she couldn’t honestly say they’d known anything about her. Certainly she’d never felt she could speak to them with candor, or share her thoughts and feelings in any meaningful way. Yet Mr. Howard, on the strength of a few hours’ acquaintance, had asked her questions and, even more surprising, had actually listened to her answers.
Most surprising of all, she’d managed to speak with him as Helena Parr, a confident and articulate adult. The shy and awkward debutante of ten years past? Gone. The rejected fiancée, so cringing and apologetic, of five years ago? Absent.
Just the thought of it made her smile. And it made her wonder: here, in France, might she finally be free of the past?
Chapter 6
Helena rose at dawn the next day, and spent a happy and solitary morning in her studio, fortifying herself with cups of tea from her aunt’s silver samovar. She fueled it with lumps of the ersatz coal the French called boulots, which threw off about as much heat as a firefly’s dying breath, but the samovar didn’t seem to mind. It did look rather ridiculous amid such rustic surroundings, but it boiled water quickly without heating the already-warm studio and meant she didn’t have to invade Jeanne’s kitchen whenever she wanted a cup of tea.
Having decided to work up one or two of her sketches from the day before in pastels, she looked them over and chose one that was little more than a few penciled lines. A swath of lavender had colonized a ruined drystone wall, rooting wherever pockets of soil had collected, and she’d been entranced at the way the plants spilled in a leggy jumble over the scattered blocks, as if there were no place on earth they’d rather be growing.
She began with blocks of color, which she pressed onto the paper with broken pieces of hard chalk pastels: a pale gray, almost white, for the mass of the wall, a bluish gray for the undulating mass of the foliage, and airy smudges of cornflower blue and violet for the blossoms. Dipping a flat brush in water, she used its damp bristles to sharpen the pigments here and there, adding intensity to the blossoms and depth to the ruined wall. She worked quickly, never lingering in any one spot for fear of overworking the pigments.
At this stage, the painting needed some time to dry, so she made herself a cup of tea, washed and dried the brush she’d used, and walked down to the edge of the top garden terrace. The sky was a dazzling blue already, without a shred of morning cloud. It would be another fine day, and very hot. Perfect weather for an afternoon on the beach.
She stood at the edge of the terrace and sipped at her tea, and tried to recall what life had been like before she had discovered she could draw.