Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

“Cut it out!” she said, then moved away from him. Her face became serious

. “We can’t do this if you don’t behave.”

“All right,” he said, smiling as he held up his hands and moved them about so he was framing different aspects of the landscape. “This one. I think I like the folly to the left of the picture and that tree in the foreground.”

“Very good!” Zoë said, impressed. “That’s a balanced composition. Okay, so the first thing you do is—”

“What does ‘okay’ mean?”

“If you’ve spent even ten minutes around Amy you’ve heard it before,” she said, sounding like the stern teacher she was trying to be.

He just smiled and looked down at the paper on his lap. “Now what do I do?”

“You need to make a basic sketch to get your proportions right. This is the foundation of your drawing. If this is off, when you finish, no matter how good your technique is, the drawing will be bad.”

He looked at the lake, then down at his paper, then up again. “You must show me,” he said.

Zoë moved close to him, put her hand over his, and directed him in putting the curve of the lake on the paper. “See? Like this. Now where is the folly?”

His face was turned toward hers. “Here,” he said, not bothering to look at the paper.

“That’s—” She had meant to tell him that was wrong because he wasn’t looking, but his finger was in exactly the right spot. “All right, so now we sketch in the little building.”

Since the folly was on the far side of the paper, she had to reach across him to block it in.

“Would you look at the paper?” she snapped, then sat back on her heels. “You know, you really are throwing away the chance of a lifetime. I know about the class system in England and right now I’m giving you a way to get out of being just a stable boy all your life. Maybe you’ll never be a real artist, but it’s the eighteenth century. You could get away with making crude portraits and still make a living. Wouldn’t you rather have that than shoveling horse manure for the rest of your life?”

He blinked at her a few times as he digested what she’d said, then he took the pencil from her, looked up at the lake and made a few quick marks on the paper. He turned it around to show her. “Is this what you had in mind that I should do to get myself out of the stables?”

Zoë looked at the drawing, saw that it was perfectly in proportion, and that in just a few marks he’d captured the entire setting.

It seemed that a thousand thoughts went through her mind at once. Obviously, a trick had been played on her. This man was the painter, Russell Johns. She was going to kill Amy for lying to her, telling her he was a scrawny little man with bad teeth.

Besides Amy lying to her, so had he. He’d said his name was MacKenzie, and he’d worked at not letting her know the truth.

The first emotion she felt was anger. Two people had treated her like a moron. They’d lied, kept secrets, and made her the butt of a joke. But her second emotion was laughter. They’d got her a good one.

She saw that the man was looking at her with a fake expression of defiance, but underneath it she could see worry. He knew she’d figured out who he was and he was concerned that she was going to tell him she never wanted to see him again.

She wasn’t going to do what he expected her to. “Your work is a bit primitive, totally unrefined,” she said as loftily as she could manage, “but for a first attempt, I guess it is acceptable.”

There was such relief in his eyes that she had to work not to laugh. “Primitive, is it?” He turned the pad around and looked up at her then back down as he made quick marks on the paper. After only a minute, he turned the paper toward her. “Is that crude?”

Zoë had to prevent herself from gasping. His sketch of her was as good as a Boldini, the magnificent portrait painter from Edwardian England. However, he’d made her look as though she thought she was better than he was. “Mmmm,” she said, as though it were nothing special.

He didn’t say a word, just handed her the paper and pencil. His gesture said that if she thought she could do better, she was welcome to try.

This is it, she thought. If I don’t do well at this, I’ll lose his respect. She was glad she’d had a substantial amount of the perry because otherwise she would have been nervous. Instead, on the same paper as his drawing of her, she made a quick sketch of him, incorporating it with the one he’d done of her. She drew his face as quite a bit smaller than hers, and he had a look of almost fear, as though he were frightened of the woman above him. He was looking up at her in trepidation, seeming to be pleading with her.

She turned the pad toward him. For a moment his face registered shock, and Zoë thought he might get angry. In the next second, he began laughing so hard that he rolled over onto his side.

“You deserved it!” she said, laughing with him. “Of all the rotten tricks to play on me!”

“I did nothing,” he said, laughing hard. “I was innocent, caught in a web of lies between you and that harridan in the kitchen. She rules the poor young master, but she’s never ruled me before. She told the lies, not me.”

“Oh yeah? So who was it that told me his name was MacKenzie?”

“It is. Russell MacKenzie Johns.”