At the Edge of Summer

He didn’t quietly ignore me after that.

As summer stretched, we were outside as often as we could be. Sometimes the light-speckled chapel courtyard, sometimes the bank of the river, sometimes the woods or the caves. But most often it was the chestnut tree on the back lawn, within sight of Mille Mots. I’d sit, drawing, Luc would lie, reading. When the shadows swung to afternoon, he’d sneak into the kitchen past the dozing Marthe and bring me pilfered pastries or bread and jam or bowls of almost-ripe apricots. He gave me my first taste of coffee and, when his mother wasn’t looking, my first taste of coffee with brandy. I fell asleep each night full of dreams, and Luc, he didn’t miss a weekend home.

I never saw him draw again, though. It was one of the few secrets he had from me. “I’m not very good,” he always said. “You should see me play tennis.” Though I never did, I begged him to show me. “Come and watch when I play in the Olympics,” he’d tease.

But I wondered where his drawing pad was, the one he’d closed so quickly when I caught him at the Brindeau caves. I wondered if he’d ever sketched me again.

“Why should I say?” he asked one Saturday morning as we sat beneath the chestnut tree. “You won’t tell me what you sketch.”

“Yes, I did. The château.”

“But that was weeks ago.”

“And it’s still the château. Again.”

“Surely there is no shortage of other subjects. The Aisne? The chestnut tree? Marthe and her birds?” He winked. “Or are you waiting for the subject to choose you?”

I ignored that. “Your papa, he gave me some lessons.”

“Let me guess.” He poked his pencil in his book to mark his page. “Fruit?”

“Far too much fruit.” I frowned down at the page. Monsieur Crépet’s slow, patient lessons were about shapes, lines, shadows, highlights. The little table in the rose garden was always set out with fruit bowls overflowing. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look an orange in the eye again.”

“Well, then.” He took an apricot from the fruit dish. “Here.” He tossed it. “Draw that.”

“Really?” I gave him a flat stare. “More fruit?”

“You must be an expert by now.” He leaned back on his elbows, his book forgotten. “Show me.”

“This is ridiculous. I already told you, I’m tired of—”

He waved off the rest of my complaint. “Clare, just try.”

It was only a circle; it shouldn’t have been too hard. If there was one thing Monsieur Crépet was insistent on, it was circles.

Yet Luc was not as patient as his father, not nearly as forgiving. For every one I drew, he found some fault. “Too lopsided.” “Too regular.” “Too shadowed.” “Clare, where is the fuzz? Where is the stem? Look closer.” For ages I drew sphere after sphere, shading and stumping. “Try the cross-hatching,” he’d say or “Use the flat of your pencil.”

Finally I threw my pencil across the grass in disgust. “I don’t want to draw an apricot. I want to draw an orchard full of apricots. I want to draw wagons and ladders and girls in striped skirts filling baskets with them.”

He retrieved my pencil. “Monsieur Monet didn’t wake up one morning to paint Fontainebleau Forest.”

I rolled my shoulders. “He might have.”

Luc recited with the air of someone who had heard it all before. “Monsieur Monet studied for many years to learn how to hold his brush, how to turn his hand to make a leaf, how to blend colors to dapple a forest floor.” He sat back down and stretched out his legs. “And he never threw his pencil.”

I crossed my eyes at him.

He ignored that. “Papa started me on fruit, too. You learn so much about shape.”

“Now I can see why you decided to be a tennis player instead,” I grumbled. “There’s no passion in shape.”

“Then tell me.” He held up a finger. “What do you want to draw?”

“I told you, I only know how to—”

“Not ‘can.’ ” He sat up. “Want to.” He leaned forward. The sunshine filtering through the leaves sent shards of gold across his face. “If you could draw anything in the world right now, what would it be?”

The cicadas sang.

“You,” I said softly.

He froze. I wondered what answer he’d been expecting.

But of course it was him. Though I knew he was older, a man to my mere decade and a half, I couldn’t help but think of him when I fell asleep each night and when I woke in the morning. I’d look out my window as the sun exploded over the horizon, just on the chance that he was down there playing tennis. I wanted to begin my day with a glimpse of his face.

I wouldn’t be at Mille Mots forever. Soon someone would come to get me, I knew it. Mother, I hoped, or maybe Grandfather. When I left, I wanted a reminder of Luc to take with me.

But here he sat, frozen, almost fearful.

I read once that in some corners of the world, where tribes lived untouched by modern life, it was forbidden to take someone’s likeness. Either drawing or photographing, to capture someone’s face, you might accidentally capture their soul.

I sharpened my pencil. “I’ve never done this, you know. You could end up looking like a Martian.”

This seemed to make him nervous. He wiped his brow. “When drawing a face, the shapes are the most important.” He cleared his throat. “It’s like a skeleton. If you have it right underneath, the rest will follow.”

I turned to a fresh page in my sketch pad. “You don’t always have to be a teacher. Sometimes you can just be a friend.” I propped up the pad on my knees.

He dipped his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Head up and sit still!”

Silence stretched, though less companionable than our usual quiet. Even the insects were subdued. A green chestnut fell.

“Do you—” I began, as he said, “Have you—”

He nodded. “Go ahead.”

I hesitated. “Luc…do you think my mother thinks of me?”

He didn’t answer directly, but instead asked, “What made you think of that?”

I pulled my braid over my shoulder. “I’m never not thinking of it.” I adjusted the sketch pad. “But she used to sit with her paintbrush outside under a tree, like this.”

A bee buzzed near his ear, but he didn’t flinch. I sketched the bee into my drawing.

“Is that why I always find you out here, under the chestnut tree?”

“That, out here, I’ll feel closer to her? That I might capture a little of whatever she always tried to capture?” My pencil traced the curve of his face. “Maybe.”

“What would she paint when she was outside?” He smiled. “Buildings?”

If she painted, she never showed me. All I saw were those empty canvases. “I don’t know.” I’d watch her from the window, all dressed in pink and perched on a stool before her easel. Nanny Proud would let me watch as long as I liked, but Miss May would pull me away by the hair. “But she looked so lovely and so happy out there in front of her easel. Inside the house, with Father, she never looked happy.”

He stretched, but kept his head still.

“It was almost as though she loved the idea of being an artist as much as she loved creating. She loved to set up her easel just so, to sharpen her pencils, to hold her palette.”

He brushed a blade of grass from his shoe. “She missed her days at the School of Art?”

“She missed a lot of things, I think.”

His gaze slipped sideways and he was quiet. “I’m sure she still does,” he said finally. “Miss things.”

I couldn’t trust myself to voice my hope. Instead, I let the scratching of my pencil and the coppery buzz of cicadas fill the silence, until Luc cleared his throat.

“Your turn.” I remembered. “What were you going to ask earlier?”

“Your grandfather, have you heard from him?”

“No.” I kept my gaze on the sketch. “He’s off playing with languages somewhere.”

“Didn’t he raise your mother? Maman said that when they were girls, playing on the banks of the Tummel, it was Monsieur Muir alone up there at the big house.”

“Exactly. He’s already raised one child. Why would he want to raise another?” My pencil dug into the paper. “Mother always said that he wasn’t very good at it anyway. That he kept to his work and left her to the nannies and governesses.” So much like Father, who hardly ever came out of his study after Mother left, who rarely came to see me recite in the schoolroom. And yet I had the comfort of knowing he was there, that he was looking out at the same stars I was. “Anyway, it’s been six years since we’ve seen each other. We’re practically strangers.”

“So are you and I,” he pointed out.

“And yet I’d stay forever, if you asked me.”

The impulsive sentence hung between us. A thrush took up singing somewhere above. For half a moment I wondered if he would ask me.

I cleared my throat, smudged a line on my drawing. “Would you like to take a look?” Without waiting for his answer, I flipped the sketch pad around.

I waited with fingers tight on the corners of the pad, watching him. Already I could see errors and I knew he could, too, the way his eyes tightened in the corners. He was thinking of polite things to say.

“This is silly.” I tried to turn it back, but he caught the edge of the pad, his fingers brushing mine.

“No, it’s quite good.”

“It’s not.”

“This is only your first time, after all.”

“You’re lying and I should stick to buildings and fruit.” I moved to tear it from the book, but he stopped my hand.

“Okay, the lines beneath. The shapes.” He lifted my hand from the paper and put the pencil back under my fingers. “The circle behind the apricot.”

His fingers were warm. “That’s all?”

“Start there.”

I squinted down at the paper, erased, drew, erased again. It took shape, almost. He watched, patient. Finally I threw down the book. “It’s not…never mind. Why am I even trying this?”

He picked it up. “Stop being frustrated.”

“Stop being nice. I’m not an artist. I’ll never be Mother.”

“No. But you’re Clare.” He took my pencil and used the back end to trace the lines of my drawing. “It’s the cheek, right there. And see the line of my jaw? It’s not that round. You’re almost there.”

“Lines and circles, lines and circles,” I murmured under my breath. The bones underneath. “Let me see.”

Eyes closed, I leaned forward and put my hands flat on his face.

I think he stopped breathing.

I know that, for a split second, I did.

I had more important things to worry about right then. Like the fact that my heart was near to pounding out of my chest. That his cheeks were soft and rough, all at once. That he was close enough for me to feel his breath on my face. Close enough that I could kiss him.

I opened my eyes. He watched me. His were brown, ringed with gold. “So that’s your face,” I said softly. I licked my lips. “I understand now.”

I counted three heartbeats, three seconds of wishing, three seconds where I thought that he really would lean forward.

“When you didn’t want me to draw you earlier…”

“Yes?” he asked.

“…were you afraid to be captured to paper?”

He exhaled. “I’m already caught.”

His eyes looked everywhere on my face. Beneath my fingers, his cheeks were warm. I could see the light catch on his eyelashes. His lips moved.

I was counting breaths, one two three, when I heard her.

“Luc!” Madame’s voice carried all the way from the house.

He didn’t move, didn’t even seem to hear her. He closed his eyes.

“Luc René Rieulle Crépet!”

His eyes flew open, wide, guilty. He jerked back, leaving my hands empty in the air. I could still feel the warmth of his face.

Madame strode across the lawn. She wore a tall turban of brilliant blue silk and looked as imposing as a voodoo priestess. As she approached the chestnut tree, I scrambled to my feet.

“I was just drawing his face, Madame.” I fumbled in the grass for my pencil. I didn’t even remember dropping it.

She didn’t even look at me. “Luc, you have a visitor.”

It was then that I noticed the man behind her. He was tall, not much older than Luc, with smooth dark blond hair and a khaki suit. Draped over one arm was a motoring jacket and a pair of goggles. He looked rich and relaxed in his sporting duck, like a gentleman about to yacht or take the automobile out to shoot. Luc yanked off his striped scarf and stuffed it in his back pocket as he stood.

“Bauer, what are you doing here?”

“I was in the area,” the man said, with a raise of an eyebrow and a German accent. “I thought I would visit your château.”

Luc ducked his head. “We…we aren’t prepared for visitors.”

“Luc, don’t be impolite,” Madame said. “I’ll have Yvette set for tea in the salon.”

In Madame Crépet’s salon, each wall was a different color, like a riotous fruit bowl. Strawberry red, plum purple, pear yellow, the deep orange of a nectarine. Embroidered pillows piled on every surface, beneath paintings of long-haired women on tropical beaches, as bright as Gauguin. Her salon was like falling into a paint box.

“Mr. Bauer,” she said, with a sudden, coy smile, “I’m sure you’ll permit me my Earl Gray. I am not wholly French, after all.”

He bowed, but Luc shook his head. “The salon, Maman, it’s…the rugs are being cleaned.”

The rugs scattered throughout Mille Mots had been there since the Crusades, I was sure, faded, patterned things that always put me in mind of a Turkish harem.

“Today?” Madame blinked. “I didn’t order that.”

“Papa did,” Luc said, which was a patent lie. Monsieur Crépet scarcely noticed if he was indoors or out. He didn’t care a toss for the rugs.

“Well, then.” She tugged at an earring. “I suppose it will have to be the rose garden.”

“Perhaps Bauer doesn’t have time for tea.”

“Frau Crépet, I am most delighted for tea.” Mr. Bauer bowed. “And Crépet, you may not expel me so quickly. My racket is strapped to my motorbike.”

“You’ve come for the afternoon, then?” Luc looked dismayed.

“If it is to be tennis, I will have Marthe send sandwiches and beer,” Madame declared.

Mr. Bauer grinned. “Beer? Frau Crépet, you may not be wholly French, but you are, I think, a little bit German.”

Madame Crépet actually blushed and set off to give her instructions to the cook and maid.

“Your mother, she is more charming than you, Crépet.” Mr. Bauer touched his hat and nodded in my direction. “As is the fräulein here.”

Luc ran a hand through his hair. His friend wore a tweed cap; Luc was bare-headed and in need of a haircut. “Mademoiselle Ross, this is Stefan Bauer, my grand adversaire.” This last was said with a raise of his eyebrows.

“Grand adversaire.” Stefan Bauer laughed at this. “Do we have such a grand rivalry? Of course, I am usually winning.” He winked at me.

There was a set to Luc’s jaw. “Not always. Sometimes I win.”

His friend still watched me, until I looked away. “For now,” he said.

I wanted Luc to follow me back to the chestnut tree. I wanted to finish my drawing. I wanted to finish whatever was begun when I took his face in my hands.

Instead he pushed ahead with his introduction. He didn’t look at me as he did. “And, Bauer, this is…” He faltered.

This is the girl I almost kissed a minute ago, I filled in. This is the girl I fed honey and cheese, the girl I wrote letters to in Paris, the girl I waited for outside of a cave. This is Clare, my friend.

But “…this is Clare Ross, my mother’s ward,” is how he finished. He looked away. “She is staying here…until…until another situation can be found.”

I blinked and, through stinging eyes, watched them walk away towards the rose garden. Stefan leaned towards Luc and said, “So that is what you have been hiding?” He looked back over his shoulder at me, a long, appraising glance.

“The demoiselle?” Luc didn’t even turn around. “She’s nothing.”