“I’ll show you,” Zara said, grabbing hold of my hand.
Ethan stayed in the kitchen with his sister. He wasn’t quite up to navigating marble staircases like the one at Hallborough just yet. “You take good care of your mistress, young sir,” Ethan told the dog in a serious tone. “And you be careful, too,” he told me, with a pat to my belly, and a kiss to my forehead.
“I will.” I put my hand to his cheek and mouthed, love you.
“Me too,” he whispered. That was my Ethan, still controlling and protecting even while semi-mobile and using crutches. He was determined to be off the crutches by baby time and just have the walking boot. I knew he was disappointed he couldn’t do some of the things he wanted, but he hadn’t uttered a single complaint. Broken legs heal.
Zara took us to the guest wing of the house. The part they used for the bed & breakfast, which was why I hadn’t seen the portrait of Sir Frisk before. I’d been to the gallery, of course, which in stately homes such as Hallborough, was simply an elegant room in which to showcase the private collection of art the family had acquired over time. Hallborough’s gallery had quite a few marble sculptures, and some lovely paintings, but I’d not spent a lot of time over here studying everything in minute detail. I hadn’t had the time, and had been working on my own garden and decorating projects at Stonewell.
She stopped us at the end of a hallway, with doors on either side opening into guest rooms. Right above a carved table hung a large painting of a German Shepherd in rich detail, almost photographic in its execution. I immediately thought of the camera obscura and figured the artist must have employed the use of one to do this portrait. The subject did, indeed, look like my new pet, in coloring and in body shape. A gold plate had been made and attached at the bottom of the ornate frame with the title of the work Sir Frisk engraved into the brass.
“Well, that is something, now, isn’t it?” I grinned at Zara. “They do look almost exactly alike.”
She giggled. “Said so, Auntie Brynne.”
“I like the name. Do you like it, Zara?”
She gave me a serious nod. “That’s his name. Sir Frisk,” she said with authority, as if the decision had been made from the beginning. “He can play with Rags and they will be best friends.”
“What do you say, Sir Frisk?” I asked him. He lolled his tongue out happily, and cocked his head at me. “I can call you Sir for short.” I scratched him under the chin and I’m pretty sure he was in doggy love with his new life regardless of what we would be calling him. But still, he should have a regal name to go with his gorgeous bearing. “Sir Frisk it is then,” I announced.
Just then I felt the baby kick. “Oh, baby’s moving,” I said to Zara. “Do you want to feel?”
“Yes, please.” I brought her little hand to just under my shirt and pressed it flat down. Her eyes grew wide and she got excited. “I feel her moving around. She likes Sir Frisk and she wants to play with him.”
I laughed at her antics. “Well, we don’t know if the baby is a girl. It might be a boy I’m having.”
Zara ignored that possibility and said, “It’s a girl, Auntie Brynne.”
“How do you know?”
She shrugged. “Because I want a girl baby.”
Leave it to a child to tell you how things should be. Since we’d met, I’d learned Zara had opinions on things. On lots of things. And she had no qualms about expressing her opinions, either. She was, quite simply, lovable down to the hairs on her head. No matter what the sex of my baby, Zara would be the best cousin ever. I felt really happy at that thought.
Then my second surprise.
I took another glance at the painting, Sir Frisk, because there was something about it that was very familiar… Something also told me I knew that artist’s hand. I’d worked on other things very similar. When you conserve art, you spend many quiet hours with a painting and you get to know the artist even though they’ve been dead for a long time. You see how they set down the images they create, and their process becomes recognizable the longer you spend with the works.
Was it possible?
I looked closer and scoured the bottom for a signature. The glaze had darkened over the years, partially obscuring the lettering, so it wasn’t easy to make out, but it was there. The letters were also made smaller than typical for the particular artist I had in mind. But I knew what I was looking for. I could smell victory when I made out the letter T followed by MALLERT—before the rest was hidden by the edge of the frame. My heart pounded deeply as I realized what I was staring at. A previously unknown painting, of a very handsome dog named Sir Frisk, painted by the skillful hand of none other than the celebrated, Tristan Mallerton, creator of Lady Percival, and hundreds of other masterpieces. Jesus Christ, what else do they have in this house?!
I so needed to call Gaby and tell her this fantastic bit of incredible news.
6th February
BRYNNE was so beautiful. I was admiring from the bed, where I had a great view of her in front of the mirror as she brushed out her hair. She’d always been beautiful to me, but my connection to her now was so much deeper than it had been before. More inner feelings. My accident had broken through the really impenetrable part of me, when I was faced with saying goodbye to her up on that mountain in Switzerland. Everything seemed to reset, or realign, within my emotional grid. So the horribleness of my past was now made less important, because of what I had with her. Brynne, and our life together, was the most crucial part in making me the man I had become up to this point in my life. It was a hard concept to explain in words, but I knew how I felt, and it was a great deal better—like I could get beyond the events that had shaped so much of me in the past decade, and finally put them in their place. And leave them there.
This included Sarah Hastings for me, and Lance Oakley for Brynne. Peace, for lack of a better term, had been made and accepted within the constructs of our relationships with those people. For me, I’d made apology to Sarah about my part in Mike’s death, and as difficult as it’d been, it was crucial in letting some of that guilt go. That’s what she’d given me the day before Switzerland. Forgiveness. Dr. Wilson seemed to know what he was doing when he assigned homework. I was giving the therapy my best go, and hoping for the best, too.
Brynne had her own reasons for meeting Lance Oakley and hearing his version of things. I might not believe a word of what he’d told her was the truth, but I also knew it didn’t matter what I believed. I’d never seen the video of her and him, and I never would. Brynne was the person in charge of her destiny, and she was the one who called the shots when it came to her emotional healing. If what he’d revealed helped her to feel better about herself, then I was in full support of it. I couldn’t deny that I was f**king thrilled about Oakley being gone from London, either. That cocksucker would have been a massive problem for me if he’d decided to stick around and be her new friend. I could be reasonable to a point, and he would be f**king well past it.