Free Until the Colours Fade by Tim Jeal Page B

some reward for what will then prove to have been a wasted hour.’ He got up and placed the sketches on his chair. Now he was eager to leave as quickly as possible. The room with its boulle tables and scantly appreciated works of art made him want to shout his disgust.
    ‘I will keep them carefully, Mr Strickland.’
    Tom picked up his hat and moved towards the doorway, where he turned.
    ‘It may be unbecoming of me to make such an observation, your ladyship, but it might be less painful for any artist you may consider commissioning in the future, if you withhold your appreciation until you are able to make some firm undertaking.’ His memory of Goodchild’s treatment of him added to this rebuff, made his lower lip tremble.
    She rose and came several steps towards him, and said very softly:
    ‘Mr Strickland, not everything is always just as it seems.’
    ‘I have had proof of that today,’ he returned, refusing to be won over by the slight hint of pathos and appeal in her voice. How delightfully capricious to make a riddle out of a straightforward rejection; how amusing to try to make a man feel that his fall from favour is in some obscure and mysterious way impossible to explain; how enigmatic. Perhaps she thinks I will blame myself in the end, he thought bitterly, shutting the door behind him.
    Alone, Helen raised clenched fists to her face and pressed them against her eyes. She did not suppose that in Strickland’s position she would have behaved very differently. She cursed Charles and her husband silently and then with a sinking heart remembered what had been said in the conservatory. There were few things that she desired less than being beholden to Charles Crawford. But then, if Charles could be so resourceful, might she not be the same? The steward’s books must surely have some record of payments to a Manchester physician. They would look quite innocent there. Men paid dearly for their health, particularly those like Harry, who set such store on physical prowess. She could discover this doctor’s name; yes, and see him too … herself. She breathed deeply, feeling suddenly sick as she remembered Charles saying that he could not bear to see her humiliated. Perhaps he would not have to bear it after all.
    Not long afterwards she heard the sound of raised voices coming from the hall; the members of the hunt were returning. She rested her forehead against the cold marble mantelpiece for several seconds and then went out to meet them, a smile already on her lips.

3
    Three miles from Hanley Park was Leaholme Hall, a smaller house but two centuries older, although the Crawfords had owned it for a mere seventy years. When the first baronet had bought the hall the trees in the park had been wastefully and wantonly cut down, leaving the place naked and unsheltered on its low eminence, and since then his successors had done little to remedy this beyond planting a few scraggy poplars and light-leaved birches, which now formed an interrupted screen to the south-west. The only old tree near the house was an ancient cedar, whose dark foliage conveniently obscured the modern brickwork of the new wing. Two stories high for the most part, with small leaded panes set in mullioned windows, the house was too low and rambling to be imposing, and too large to be idiosyncratically homely, like so many smaller Elizabethan halls and manor houses.
    As his gaze passed from the dark outer hedge of the topiary garden to the small clock tower above the stables, Magnus slowed his horse to a trot. His heart was full of misgiving and, apart from his eagerness to see his sister, he took little pleasure in his homecoming. In any case Leaholme Hall was his home only in the most limited sense, since it, like his father’s title and most of his possessions, would finally pass to Charles as Sir James Crawford’s heir. But, as Magnus rode under the shadow of the squat central tower, resentment of the inferior prospects of a younger son had