Daisies and buttercups and clover would bloom in that near meadowland throughout the summer. There had been snowdrops there a few weeks ago, and there still were some primroses. But now was the time of the daffodils and, oh, she could not miss it.
It was a little-used area of the park. There was no direct route to it from the house, and it was a long walk away. One had to skirt about the lake and the band of trees that had been planted along its western bank. It was unlikely the guests would stroll there often, if at all. It was very unlikely they would walk there during a morning.
So she had taken the risk of coming back, her easel tucked beneath one arm, paper and paints and brushes and everything else she might need in her large canvas bag. She had tramped through the trees that lined the south wall, and emerged into sunlight and open spaces only when she was well out of sight of the house and the gardens and lawns fronting it.
She had painted a single daffodil two days ago but had been dissatisfied with it. She had made it too large, too bold, too yellow. It had been an object largely divorced from its surroundings. She might just as well have plucked it and carried it home and placed it in a jar and then painted it.
She had come back to paint the daffodils in their meadow. And she was rewarded by the sight of many more of them than there had been just two days ago. They were like a carpet spread out before her, their heads nodding in a breeze she had not particularly noticed. And they had the effect of making the grass in which they grew seem a richer green. Ah, they deserved to be painted just like this, she decided.
But how was she to capture what she saw with her eyes and felt with the welling emotions of her heart? How did one paint not just daffodils nodding in the grass but the eternal light and hope of spring itself? It was her first full spring here with Dora, and she had greeted it with a certain longing for something she could not even put into words. For life to resume, perhaps, as more than just a genteel existence. Or perhaps for life to begin, though that was a somewhat absurd notion when she was twenty-six years old and had already been married and widowed.
She did not usually think with her emotions.
She would try to paint. She would always try, for the road to perfection held an irresistible lure, even if the destination remained always tantalizingly just beyond the farthest horizon.
She set down her easel and bag and just stood and looked for a long time: breathing in the smells of nature, hearing birds singing among the branches of the cedars close by, feeling the cool March air overlaid by the fresh warmth of the sun.
After a few minutes, however, she knew that she was seeing only half the picture and maybe not even that much. For the trumpets of the daffodils were lifted to the sky. The petals about them faced upward. If the flowers could see, as in a sense she supposed they could, then it was the sky, rather than the grass beneath them, upon which they gazed. She, on the other hand, was looking down upon the flowers and the grass. She turned her face upward to see that the sky was pure blue, with not a cloud in sight. But now, of course, she could no longer see the daffodils.
Well, there was a solution to that.
She kneeled down on the grass and then stretched out along it on her back, careful not to crush any of the flowers. The grass sprang up between her spread arms and her body and between her ungloved fingers when she spread them wide. Daffodils bloomed all about her. She could smell them and see the undersides of the petals and trumpets of those closest to her—and the sky beyond them. And now there was a vast blue to add to the yellow and the green.
And she was a part of it all, not a separate being looking upon creation, but creation looking upon itself. Oh, how she loved moments like this, rare as they were, and how she ached with the longing to capture in paint something of the inner experience as well as the outer beauty. Perhaps this was how truly great painters felt all the time.
Perhaps truly great artists felt all the time.
But suddenly there was a sense, sharply intrusive, that she was not alone. And here she was, stretched out in the meadow among the daffodils, defenseless and foolish and trespassing even if she had been told by Lord Darleigh as well as by Sophia that she might come whenever she wished.
Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps there was no one else here after all. She lifted her head cautiously from the ground and looked around.
She was not wrong.
He was standing quite still a short distance away, his face in shadow beneath the brim of his tall hat so that she could see neither the direction of his gaze nor the expression on his face. But he could not possibly have missed seeing her. A blind man could not have missed her. Even Viscount Darleigh would have sensed her presence. But he was not Viscount Darleigh.
Of all the people he might have been—and there were ten of them at the house—he was the very one she had most wanted not to see. Again. What were the chances?
She was the first to speak.
“I do have permission to be here,” she said and then wished she had not. She had immediately put herself on the defensive.
“Beauty among the d-daffodils,” he said. “How v-very charming.”
He sounded utterly bored. If one could speak and sigh at the same time, he did it. He was wearing his drab riding coat. It had six capes—she counted this time. It was long enough to half cover his highly polished boots. It was pure nonsense to feel that he was more male than any other man she had ever encountered—but she did feel it.
Instead of leaping to her feet, as she probably ought to have done, she laid her head back down on the grass and closed her eyes. Perhaps he would go away. Was it possible to feel more embarrassed, more humiliated than she did?