The Flower Garden by Margaret Pemberton

Author:Margaret Pemberton [Pemberton, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Thirteen

Four satisfying hours later Nancy walked up the dusty path beneath the shade of the trees. Even for Ramon she had felt a reluctance to leave her painting. Like yesterday, they had worked together silently. Again he had risen when the bellboy brought his simple lunch and surveyed her work. He had still said nothing – merely nodded. The painting held primitive strength and passion. It was the work of a natural artist. It moved him and it would move others. Nancy Leigh Cameron had put her soul into oil and it showed in every brush stroke.

As the wilderness of tangled flowers and shrubbery gave way to the immaculate, carefully-tended gardens Nancy changed course, taking the longer way back to the entrance of Ramon’s suite, avoiding the pool and its laughing cliques. She was deep in thought, remembering the few words Giovanni had spoken when they had put down their brushes and he had broken the still-warm crusty bread and bitten deep into the hunk of cheese.

He was her Father Confessor. The only man who knew the truth about her. Today, life, not death, was what they had talked about: her life with Jack; her love for Ramon; the feeling of guilt and pity that tore at her now that Jack had arrived. Giovanni had listened, making no comments, finishing his peasant lunch and drinking his wine. When she had risen to leave he had said simply:

‘Never insult the person you have loved by offering duty or pity.’

She began to cross the velvet-smooth lawns that were barred to the public. She had been pitying Jack and Giovanni was right. In doing so, she had been insulting him. No more pity and no more loveless duty.

As to her painting, her mentor had said only, ‘Continue as you have begun. Always paint your interior world; the world of the mind, of dreams and nightmares, of unbridled imagination. That is where your talent lies, not in the world we see, copying landscapes or figures or jugs and fruit. Leave that to others. Your talent is of a different kind.’

‘Am I invisible?’ He was laughing down at her, only yards away.

She blinked and smiled. ‘I was miles away – thinking.’

‘You should have been in bed, resting and not painting.’

Her arm slid around the now-familiar leanness of his waist as his arm circled hers. ‘How do you know I’ve been painting?’

‘It was a difficult deduction, but the scarlet streak on your cheek and the smudge of blue on the tip of your nose gave me a clue.’

Her hands shot to her face, horrified. ‘Is it as bad as all that? I must look like a clown.’

‘You look delightful,’ and to prove that she did, he kissed her long and lingeringly.

When they parted the blue had transferred itself to his darkly handsome face. She laughed and rubbed it away with her fingers.

‘I must wash and change.’

‘You will do no such thing.’ His voice was firm. ‘I haven’t seen you for sixteen hours and I’m not letting you out of my sight.

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