Page 31 of The Christmas Invitation
‘I like to start like that and then work over the wet surface more thickly afterwards. Sometimes I’m practically mixing the colours on the canvas.’
‘Why are there random little blobs of paint dotted here and there over the rest of it?’
‘Colour notes: I don’t suppose you’re going to be wearing the same clothes every day, for a start, so it will help me later.’
‘Interesting!’ she said. ‘Well, I think we’ve both done a good morning’s work, because not only have I written two chapters of the novel, but before that I added a little more to my memoirs. And after lunch, I’ll be back to the day job. I’ve had an idea about that inscription I’ve been working on.’
I cleaned my palette knives and stuck them in the jar that I’d found in the studio, encrusted in ancient blobs of oil paint, like strangely coloured lichen.
The day had brightened and I carried the portrait through to the studio and set it on the old easel there, intending, once I’d had lunch, to spend the afternoon blocking out the background.
But it only seemed like I’d been back in the studio for five minutes before Clara winkled me out and insisted I go with her to Underhill.
‘Sybil rang to invite us to tea. Tottie’s already there because they’ve been for a hack on the moors. We can bring her back with us, which will save her the walk up, though it’s much shorter over the paddocks. And Henry will collect Teddy from school and then they’re going to call in on Lex at the pottery.’
‘It’s very kind of Sybil to invite me, but really, I’m here to work and—’
‘To convalesce and have some fun, too,’ she interrupted firmly. ‘Come along. The fresh air will do you good andI’mcurious to see what Mark is up to at Underhill. I haven’t been there for ages.’
‘Here we are,’ announced Clara unnecessarily, driving through a stone arch and pulling up in the middle of a cobbled courtyard, scattering a gaggle of hens. They were the kind with frivolously feathery ruffles round their ankles, if henshaveankles.
The manor was a rambling, L-shaped low stone house of some charm, but no great architectural merit, having evidently been randomly extended and cobbled together over several generations. A large attached barn or coach house formed one side of the courtyard and I thought the original building might have started life as a farm.
‘This was the back entrance to the house, of course, before they built the reservoir,’ Clara said. ‘Come along!’
I left the warmth of the car reluctantly, because heavy spatters of rain had been added to the icy wind and it felt as if someone was casting giant handfuls of water at us.
‘It can’t have been fun out riding in this,’ I remarked, but Clara said Tottie and Sybil were tough as old boots and wouldn’t let the weather stop them.
‘Though Mark might, unless Sybil starts paying all the bills for the horses’ keep and part of Len’s wages for acting as groom,’ she added sardonically.
‘Did you say Sybil’s son was turning Underhill into a wedding venue, or hotel, or something?’
If so, he could call it Bleak House; that would bring the punters in … not.
‘Something like that. He’s nearly finished converting the coach house over there into a wedding reception room, I think, but he’s fallen out with the builders and he won’t find any willing to come up here till at least the New Year – if they can even get up here then.’
That sounded ominous. The prospect of being snowed up in the Red House over Christmas with Lex Mariner was not an enticing one.
Clara led the way into the house through a large, metal-studded oak door and along a narrow passage, then, without any ceremony, threw open an inner door and shouted into the dark, cavernous interior beyond it, ‘Coo-ee, we’re here!’
Her deep, rich voice echoed around a very large hall, from which a splendid staircase ascended. There was about half a tree trunk in the vast open fireplace at the far end of the room, but since it was unlit, it was nearly as cold in there as it had been outside.
‘There’s always been a fire kept burning in here right through the winter, Mark,’ Clara said, as a thin young man emerged from a nearby passage. He had very dark auburn hair and straight eyebrows twitched into what looked like a permanent frown, but he wasn’t unattractive in a slightly foxy kind of way.
‘I can’t afford to keep huge fires going in all the rooms,’ he said shortly.
‘That’s false economy in an old house like this, darling, because your central heating isn’t up to much and you need to keep the whole place warm or it will soon get damp.’
He scowled at her, though her suggestion had sounded very sensible to me, then turned his brooding tawny eyes in my direction and stared.
It was dark in there, so what with my very pale skin and the green hair, I probably looked a bit spectral. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off me, anyway.
‘This is Meg Harkness. I expect your mother told you I had a portrait painter staying with me over Christmas?’
‘I … think she did mention it,’ he said, his eyes still fixed on me. ‘She’s painting your portrait, Aunt Clara, isn’t she? I’m Mark Whitcliffe,’ he added to me, holding out his hand. ‘The Doome – or doomed – heir.’
His wry smile was rather attractive and I found myself answering it.
