Free Windfallen by Jojo Moyes Page A

end up looking as if they’re about to keel over.”
    “Bowls of fruit . . .” Frances shook her head. “How can you engender passion for art with bowls of fruit? Come on, Lottie. Come and draw what is in your head, your heart.”
    Lottie shook her head, stepped back, suddenly reluctant and self-conscious. Adeline’s fingers found her back, propelled her gently forward.
    “You need to learn to dream, Lottie. To express yourself.”
    “But I don’t even do art anymore now we’ve finished school. Mrs. Holden says I should focus on other lessons, so that I can get a good job in a shop.”
    “Oh, forget shops, Lottie. Look, it doesn’t have to be anything. Just enjoy the feel of the pastels. Pastels are beautiful to work with. See . . .” Frances began drawing lines on the wall, smudging the colors with her paint-stained fingers, her movements confident and sure.
    Lottie watched, briefly forgetting herself.
    “Don’t forget to include yourself, Frances darling.” Adeline placed a hand on her shoulder. “You never include yourself.”
    Frances paused. Kept her eyes on the wall.
    “I’m not good at painting myself.”
    Marnie emerged at the back door. Her apron was covered in blood and feathers, and a half-plucked goose hung by its neck from her left hand. “Excuse me, ma’am. Mr. Armand has arrived.”
    Lottie had been staring at the pastel marks. She glanced at Adeline, who smiled gently and nodded, dismissing Marnie. Lottie waited for her to rush to the door, to straighten herself, or race to put on some makeup, as Mrs. Holden invariably did, feeling herself flush with excitement that she was finally going to meet Adeline’s elusive husband.
    But Adeline simply turned her attention back toward the white wall.
    “Then we will have to get someone to paint you, Frances,” she said, seemingly unconcerned. She paused. “You are, after all, an essential part of our picture, non ?”
    Marnie’s face reappeared in the doorway. “He’s in the drawing room.”
    Frances stepped away from the wall and looked at Adeline in a way that made Lottie feel inexplicably furtive.
    “I think I am more effective as an invisible presence,” she said slowly.
    Adeline shrugged, as if relinquishing an oft-fought argument, raised a hand slightly, and then turned and walked toward the house.
    Lottie had not been entirely sure what she had been expecting. But Julian Armand was so far from anything she might have even considered that she had looked past him twice before realizing that this was the man to whom Adeline was introducing her.
    “So charmed,” he said, holding her hand and kissing it. “Adeline has told me so much about you.”
    Lottie didn’t speak, staring in a manner that Mrs. Holden would have found certifiable at this short, dapper man with slicked-down hair and an extraordinary curled mustache, like wrought-ironwork on his face.
    “Lottie,” she whispered. And he nodded, as if that were quite gracious enough.
    It was not hard to see where Adeline got her extravagant tastes. He was dressed in fashions that might have been fitting several decades ago, and even then only in certain esoteric circles: in tweed knickerbockers with a matching waistcoat and jacket. He wore a tie of emerald green and perfectly round tortoiseshell glasses. From his top pocket hung an extremely elaborate fob watch, while in his left hand he held a silver-topped cane. His highly polished brogues were the only conventional thing on him, and even those bore little resemblance to the brogues Lottie knew—the ten-shilling pairs on High Street.
    “So this is Merham,” he said, looking around him at the view from the window. “This is where you have decided to base us.”
    “Now, Julian, you are not to make any judgments until you have lived here for a whole week.” Adeline reached for his hand, smiling at him.
    “Why, you have plans for me?”
    “I always have plans for you, dearest. But I don’t want you to decide until you have