Page 49
“Bacchus and Ariadne.” He followed her gaze to the Titian. “Ariadne saved Theseus from the Minotaur. Do you know the myth?”
Nina nodded. “She gave him a spool of thread so he could find his way out of the Minotaur’s maze. And for her pains, he abandoned her on an island.”
“Where she found love, with Bacchus, god of wine and rapture.”
Nina studied the painting, which she’d copied several times, practicing Titian’s techniques. This painting moved her, the blue of the sky and the sea, Theseus’s ship disappearing in the distance, Ariadne twisted away from Bacchus, himself suspended in midair.
“Love?” she echoed, and shook her head. “Ariadne looks frightened. And she’s turned toward the man who left her.” She sighed. “I doubt the god of wine is more trustworthy than Theseus. Those cheetahs, though, are darling.” Titian had included two gorgeous, shadowy cheetahs, positioned between Bacchus and Ariadne. They were her favorite part of the painting, a reminder of her mother’s adage.
Much comfort in cats, little in men.
“Ah yes, the cheetahs.” De’Ath laughed. “They pull Bacchus’s chariot. Do you see the dog?”
“Also darling.” His laughter made her smile. It felt rather delightful, to sit with him in this cool, airy room, people drifting past, nothing demanded of her.
She tipped her head toward his.
“But I prefer cats,” she said. “My brother and I have two, and our aunts have seven.”
“Your aunts. These are the ones with the lovely cottage?”
“Yes, the only ones. Aunt Sylvia and Miss Lolly.”
Aunt Sylvia was Jack’s aunt, technically, sister to Jack’s father. Miss Lolly wasn’t related to anyone. She’d lived with Aunt Sylvia for decades.
“Two aunts, seven cats, and a room to spare.” De’Ath tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Yet it fell to your rough-spoken brother to raise you.”
A cold current moved through Nina’s veins. Her sense of delight chilled into an awareness of danger. Suddenly, the chair felt hard and ungiving, a chair fit for the accused in court.
De’Ath’s pause was expectant.
Surely it was more suspicious to say nothing.
“We made their acquaintance when we were already grown,” she said. “Or I did. My brother knew them a little, but only as a very young child. They’re on our father’s side of the family, and he died first, before I was born. In the village, he was a harness maker, but he moved to London, and that’s where he met our mother.”
De’Ath shifted in his chair so he faced toward her, signaling that she had his full attention.
She went on. “He worked in a carriage factory. Something broke, a hoist. He was killed, quite crushed.” She winced. Jack had given her details she wished he hadn’t. “Our mother didn’t talk about him much. And she never took us to the village or talked about our aunts either. I think she blamed herself for keeping him in London and imagined that his sister blamed her too.”
Nina stopped, a tickle in her throat. It was all true, except John Reeve hadn’t been her father. Her eyes flicked back to the Titian, to the left edge, Theseus’s boat poised to sail out of the picture forever.
She’d rather not speak of her father, Richard Finch.
She heard De’Ath’s chair creak.
“England’s factories produce nearly as many tragedies as matchsticks.” He sounded grim.
She turned her head. He’d taken off his spectacles. He was looking at her, his gaze unreadable.
“Then Mother died,” she said. The banality of this sort of sentence still shocked her. It was so impersonal, and the loss had been so overwhelmingly specific. She wanted to ask De’Ath if he ever felt that words fell short, failed to express what mattered most. He was a person with whom one could discuss such things. He might have answers, or better questions.
“I’m sorry,” he said. There was a threadbare phrase. But something in his voice filled it with a hundred shades of meaning.
Slowly, he lifted his hand. Her breath caught. Would he touch her? In the middle of the National Gallery? He laid the hand on his own arm, near the elbow.
“How did you reunite with your aunts?”
She lowered her eyes.
