Meanwhile, her more mobile creations were yelling in the back garden and would shortly be clattering in with demands to be fed, cleaned, re-dressed, soothed, listened to, fed again, read books, undressed, and finally crammed into beds, where she could only hope they would stay for a good long time.
Thought of Roger, though, lifted her heart. He’d come back from the battle grimy and exhausted—and changed. It wasn’t a drastic change. More the solidifying of a change he’d begun a long time ago. He was quiet, but he’d told her why he’d felt he had to stay, and what had happened, and she could tell that while he’d been shocked （who wouldn’t be? she thought）， it was a shock that had left him more visibly determined. And with an odd, quiet sort of light about him, that sometimes she imagined she could almost see.
“Encaustic,” she said aloud, and stood still, squinting at the portraits but not seeing them. Her fingers had twitched the brush she was cleaning into position, wanting to paint.
“Not now,” she said to them, and put the brush into her box. She could feel the painting she wanted to do of Roger. An encaustic painting; one done with pigments mixed into hot beeswax. It gave you a vivid image, but one with a peculiar sense of softness and depth. She’d never done it herself, but she was seized by the conviction that this would be the right medium in which to catch Roger’s light.
Any further thoughts were interrupted by the distant sound of the front door, a murmur of male voices, and then the clumping of Henrike’s wooden-heeled shoes on the pineapple floorcloth and the louder clump of heavy boots, following.
“Ist deine Bruder,” Henrike announced, throwing open the door. “Und his Indian.”
“THE INDIAN” BOWED to her and came up grinning, though she was sufficiently familiar with his face by now to recognize bravado covering anxiety. She smiled back and impulsively took his hand, squeezing slightly in reassurance—about the situation, if not the painting.
He blinked in shock, then fumblingly raised her hand, evidently thinking she meant him to kiss it. He couldn’t quite bring himself to do that, though, and merely breathed on her knuckles in confusion. Brianna glanced up and met her brother’s eye. He was keeping a British officer’s straight face, but let a trace of humor show in his eyes.
“Thank you, Mr. Cinnamon,” she said, gently detaching her hand. She spread her skirts and curtsied to him, which made him blush like a very large plum and made William look hastily away.
William could wait, though; she had a sitter who had come to see his finished portrait.
“Come see,” she said simply, and beckoned Cinnamon—he wouldn’t let her call him by his first name, nor would he call her Brianna, evidently thinking that was improper. William must have been giving him etiquette lessons—or maybe that was Lord John.
She’d hung a thin muslin cloth over the portrait to keep off gnats and mosquitoes, which had a fatal attraction for linseed oil and drying paint, and now stepped to one side and pulled it deftly away.
“Oh,” he said. His face was completely blank. Her heart had sped up when the young men had come in, and more when the moment of revelation approached; she wasn’t as keyed up as John Cinnamon was but undeniably felt an echo of his nervous excitement.
He stood staring at the portrait, mouth slightly open and eyes wide. A little worried, she glanced at William, whose gaze was also fixed on the portrait but wearing an expression of surprised pleasure. She took a breath and relaxed, smiling.
“You did it,” William said, turning to her. “You really did.” He laughed, a soft rumble of delight as he turned back to the painting. “That is amazing!”
“It—” Cinnamon started, then stopped, still staring at the portrait of himself. He shook his head slightly and turned to William. “Do I—really look like that?”
“You do,” William assured him. “Though not as clean. Don’t you ever look at yourself when you’re shaving?”
“Oui, but …” The blankness was fading into fascination, and he drew cautiously nearer to the portrait. “Mon Dieu,” he whispered.
She’d painted him in his gray suit—he owned only one—with a snowy-white shirt and a neckcloth with a lacy fall over the manly chest. William had contributed a small gold stickpin in the shape of a flower whose heart was a faceted pink topaz, surrounded by green-foil petals.
She’d persuaded him not to wear a wig and to abandon the bear-grease pomade with which he sometimes attempted to plaster down his curls, and had painted him with his distinctive red-brown hair left loose to riot over the lovely broad curve of his skull and the faint reflection of it in the skin of jaw and cheekbones. He’d done his best to keep a stoic, reserved expression on his face, but she’d spent enough time talking to him while she sketched that she’d been able to catch the light that danced in his eyes when he was amused. And it danced in his portrait, in a tiny fleck of white touched with lemon.